The Fateful Voyage
by thedraconicwerewolf
Summary: Two hedgehogs, both on opposite ends of the social ladder, end up going to the same place. One wants to go; the other doesn't. Watch as one tries to show the other a life he never knew, while the other tries to look for a good friend he never had.
1. Boarding the Ship of New Beginnings

Hello everybody! This is a story idea I came up with after I finished playing a video game for the ds called "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors". It's a very fun game that is mainly just finding things and solving problems. Yes, that might sound boring to some of you, but the script that goes along with it is very captivating and will keep you questioning things until you finally reach the end where all the answers to the questions risen from the game will be answered.

Anyway, the reason I felt the need to write this story was because of the setting the story of the game was based on. No, the story does not revolve around the game I just described, as it should be obvious due to the fact this is under the Sonic the Hedgehog category. I won't say too much about it since I kind of want you guys to figure out how this story will be written out. Don't worry, I'm sure you all will be able to figure out what other famous story this is based on. Oops, I've already said too much. Best shut up now and let you read on and discover it for yourself. And no, this story won't have a summary, as I'm sure you'll understand what the whole thing will be once you read this first chapter.

Don't forget to leave a review after you're done reading!

**

* * *

Chapter 1: Boarding the Ship of New Beginnings**

"The ship shall be leaving the harbor in approximately half an hour from now!" a loud voice from somewhere shouted over the hustle and bustle from what had just been identified as a ship harbor. "All passengers please make sure to leave your luggage with the ship crew momentarily for standard search procedures and proceed through the designated checkpoints so we can thoroughly scan you for any banned or illegal items on your person. I repeat...,"

It was a terribly busy day down at the harbor, as it was indicated by the loud commanding voice of a man directing a large and even louder crowd of regular people walking around with others and what looked to be luggage in their hands. It was a place where both passenger and freight ships dock side by side and allow themselves to be loaded with either cargo or paying passengers. Such was the norm on almost every day of the week in the always bustling Robotropolis Harbor.

However, today was an exceptionally busy day with a bunch of people with luggage in their hands walking up and down the harbor and only one ship currently docked there. Today, this lone ship with crewmembers and passengers alike walking into its interior is the grand star and is being celebrated as such. This passenger cruise liner has just been completed after a few years' worth of careful planning and crafting and is soon to be embarking on its first ever journey across the sea and to the neighboring continent's city's port, Port Mobius.

Normally, people would not pay so much attention to the completion of a ship and gather at the harbor just to look at and watch a ship's first voyage out to sea. What made this one so special from the others is that all of the engineers and technicians involved with the creation claim that it would now be the fastest ship ever to set sail across the long expanse of the Mobian Sea. Instead of taking a good month and a half to traverse the great sea with no signs of civilization in between, it will now take no more than a month for the journey to be completed, a great and almost unbelievable claim that is cause for such a great turnout for the beginning of the ship's first voyage.

It was about this time that a fancy and lavish-looking black car that looked to be able to easily accommodate seven people pulled up just beside the entrance to the harbor that could only be accessed by foot at a speed just slightly above the recommendation. A few bystanders that were near the vehicle jumped out of the way initially scared of being run over by such a fast and potentially reckless driver. A few even dared to throw a few choice words at the people inside in anger before moving on to whatever it was they were doing.

"We have arrived at Robotropolis Harbor, sirs and madam," the driver, a man who looked to be a green feathered bird, announced as he opened the door and stepped out, feeling and smelling the salty sea breeze against his face. He then quickly approached the passenger door on his side and opened it for the occupants to exit with little hassle. He was dressed fancy with black pants and jacket that held the designs similar to that of a limo driver. His hat was black and squishing down some of his hair at the back with some kind of symbol adorned just above the tongue showing who it was he was working for. The way he carried himself as he walked the short distance displayed his professionalism and the years of experience he had driving people around to their destinations.

"Thank you Jet," a man thanked as he exited the vehicle and stood up tall and proud, his very posture showing off that he had some semblance of power and flaunting it around so that even those who did not know him would notice. He then said as he quickly spread the wrinkles off the front of his shirt, "I was afraid for a moment that we wouldn't be able to make it here before the ship took off. It would really be a shame if it were to go off on its maiden voyage without us on it."

He was a portly man dressed in clothing lavish enough to match his ever confident posture. The tails of his tuxedo rippled slightly behind him due to the sea breeze as he looked down on the concrete port around his feet as if making sure he was not stepping on or anywhere near something unsightly and thus dirty his immaculate shiny black dress shoes. In his hands was a gold pocket watch that he had drawn out of his pockets upon exiting the vehicle. He ruffled his bushy brown mustache a bit after confirming the time and putting it back into his pocket before turning back to the driver who had just walked around to the other passenger door.

"I promised you before our departure that I would get you and your party here with time to spare sir," the driver known as Jet responded with a cleverly masked pride in his words as he bent down slightly and opened the door for the other riders to exit. "I never make it a habit to propose promises that I know I can't keep. I hope that this is a clear testament to that."

"Indeed it is, my good man," the man agreed as he placed a hand over his belly covered by a white dress shirt as he let out a hearty laugh. "I would like to have a man like you to shofar me around with such confidence and reliability. Are you sure that you don't want to come along with me to Mobius? I know that they'll allow for the last-minute purchase of a first-class ticket upon entering the ship."

"I thank you for the kind offer, but I'm afraid that I must decline," Jet responded as he gave a small bow to a woman with a beautiful emerald green hat on her head that had a peacock feather ornately stuck to its side. "I have my family to attend to here in Robotropolis, and I can't possibly leave them without any warning whatsoever."

"My, that sure sounds like a man truly dedicated to nothing but the wellbeing of his family," the woman said in a voice that was beautiful and easily made the words that left her throat flow like a strand of delicate silk. "I do wish that I can have a family like the one you have one of these days before I grow too old."

As she began to walk around the car and to the side of the portly man, she was now easily seen by those on the harbor. She had on a beautiful black dress with green leaves snaking along the sides and travelling up on vines with a red rose in full bloom at the end. On her back was a pair of black wings that were identical to those of a bat, although she could not fly with them because of a childhood accident that had rendered one of them completely useless. Her pale white skin seemed to indicate that she did not see a lot of sun, yet she wore makeup on her face that seemed loud and easily covered it up. Her purple high heels clacked along the concrete as she continued walking around the vehicle with her chic leather purse held tightly in her hands.

"Oh Rouge, you're not even literally a day over thirty yet," the portly man responded with a smile on his face as he lightly scratched his balding head and lightly ruffled the hair that was still on his sides. "There's no need to be talking like you're some kind of woman who's already reached the end of her prime years."

"Well, I consider the age of thirty to be reaching the end of my prime years, Dr. Robotnik," the woman known as Rouge stated as he fiddled with a purple stone earring for no apparent reason. "It isn't every day that one can find someone they love so strongly while they're young, you know?"

"I suppose you're talking about my son, are you?" the man who was now identified as Dr. Robotnik asked as he peered over to the car behind him to see if said person had exited. "Come on son, its best you hurry up in there before the ship decides to leave without us."

Almost as if on cue, a third and final person had exited the passenger side door that the woman had come from earlier. He gave a small nod to Jet before moving around the vehicle in order to get a better look at the harbor and the ship that he was about to board.

Once he was away from the obstruction of the car, others could see who this person was. He was a black quilled hedgehog with streaks of red combing through his quills and the sides of his arms. He had on a pair of ivory white gloves with a gold bracelet on each of his wrists and shining brightly against the sun, easily blinding a few who happened to have walked within the path of the shine. Unlike the others he was driving with, he had no clothes on him. However, the fact that he had a good amount of fur on his body rendered the need for them optional and, to him, obsolete. The only thing he did have on besides his gloves was a black bowtie around his neck that was set just above a white tuft of fur on his chest as an indicator of his social standing.

"Yes father?" the person inquired sourly with a voice that sounded relatively deep yet still held onto a faint trace of an undeveloped nature to it. "Do we really have to be in such a rush? We already made it here and only have to board the ship with our luggage in tow."

"Please tell me you're still not sulking about having to leave Robotropolis," Dr. Robotnik said with a sigh as he picked up the hint of sadness and disappointment that was carefully masked in his son's voice. "We don't have much of a choice in the matter, you know? We need to move to Mobius in order to lead a life better than the one we have here now."

"We were already leading a good life here father," the other countered in a monotonous tone as he allowed his eyes to wander to the grand ship in front of him. His face showed no emotion, a clear reflection to what he was currently feeling inside, which was nothing. "Wouldn't it be easier just to start over in somewhere familiar rather than at a place where we don't know anybody and nobody knows us?"

"Oh, my dear Shadow," Rouge said sweetly as he walked up to the hedgehog and gave him a light hug from behind as a gesture of reassurance. "Your father just wants us to start a new life with a change of scenery. After all, starting over tends to be easier when you're starting out with a clean slate."

"Ha, as if it were that simple," the hedgehog named Shadow spat out as he felt the bat loosen her grip on him. He then took the chance to politely escape her grasp and walk back to the other side of the car to strike up one last conversation with Jet before they officially left Robotropolis behind.

"My, somebody's feeling a bit moody here this morning," the woman said in a teasing tone at the hedgehog, but it fell on deaf ears. She then asked the man still beside her as she walked up to the trunk that had been popped open a few seconds earlier, "Is your son always this hard to please?"

"No, he's only started acting this stubborn ever since I introduced the idea of moving to Mobius as a change of scene for my business," the portly man answered as he allowed another sigh to escape as he watched his son conversing with their shofar. "I can clearly tell that he's not wild on the idea, but it's something that can't be avoided lest I want to lose my standing as a first classman. It would not do well for my image in the business world."

"Always thinking about your business image, aren't you?" she questioned with a light chuckle. "Then again, you were known as the King of Stocks inside the Robotropolis Stock Exchange, so I suppose that losing that rather important image is not something you'd be willing to do.

"By the by, you said that Shadow has been feeling snippy since you first told him of the move," she continued on. Are you sure that was when he first started acting like this? I'm almost certain that he's started acting stubborn when you announced that you were planning to arrange a marriage with us. He didn't exactly seem eager to embrace the idea when he stormed out of the house."

"I admit that it was a very sudden proposal of marriage that I threw in his direction. I can't say I blame him for feeling that way. When I was his age, I acted the same exact way when I discovered that my parents had arranged a marriage for me in an attempt to keep the family business alive. I've come to accept it, and I only hope that the same will go for him."

"And I suppose that you want him to marry me simply because you want to keep your title as a first classman while trying to get your business back onto its feet, right? Now believe me when I say that I don't think you're doing wrong to him by marrying him off at such a young age. Seventeen year olds don't technically think of being married to someone then. However, I do truly love Shadow, and I promise to give him as much space as he needs after our marriage for him to adjust."

"You do not know how good it does my heart to hear you say that," Dr. Robotnik responded as he helped Rouge with the luggage and placed them neatly on the ground. "With you next to him, I know that I won't have to continuously worry about his wellbeing every waking second of my life. And I do thank you for your understanding as to why I'm marrying him off at such a young age."

"Oh, stop saying things like that you old fart," the bat said in a teasing voice that the older man clearly caught and chuckled lightheartedly to show he accepted it as a tease. "You're making yourself sound a lot older than you really are. As I said earlier, I do love your son, and I would gladly give him all the attention and space he needs whenever he needs it. You just worry yourself in trying to get your business back to its rightful feet."

"Speaking of business, how has yours been coming along?" the man questioned as he helped take out a large and heavy suitcase that was practically stuffed into the back of the trunk. "The last I heard, you were doing very well in terms of merchandise, and your stocks even managed to surpass mines just before the start of this economic slump."

"Unfortunately, the sales of designer women's attire and accessories have taken a turn for the worse here," she replied with a sigh as she cast a quick loving glance at Shadow's direction who was still busying himself in conversation with Jet. "Blaze Inc. has somehow managed to make a line of clothing that has surpassed the popularity of my brand of exquisite clothing. I don't understand what's the big craze about owning fake furs that are both inexpensive and offer great beauty for the fraction of the price. If you want to look nice, why don't people just go the whole nine yards and buy real fur scarves and soft mink coats and skip the cheap road altogether? I know that I'll be embarrassed to wear fake items on my person and even more so if someone points it out to me."

"With the economy here steadily turning for the worse, it's good enough reason for people to go looking around for cheaper ways to become beautiful. Even some of my fellow first classmen have stooped so low as to purchase mediocre items as a plausible replacement for what they usually own. This lack of adequate money flow is another reason I have to move across seas. Mobius is still under a healthy and steady flow of money, and that means the chances of regaining my lost profits are better."

"Well, thankfully for me, I pulled out of my partnership in my business, The Chic Rouge Boutique, right when I heard the solid rumors of both my rival company starting to surpass me and the ever growing hole in the Robotropolis economy. I still can't believe that I managed to keep all of my assets in both reasonable value and order because of that rash yet necessary move. Had I kept up with my business a few days more, I would probably be in the same problem you're facing. I don't understand how that Blaze is able to thrive in this failing economy by selling fake fashion items fit for mainly the lower class."

"Attention all passengers!" a man was heard shouting over the loud sounds of the people in the harbor. "The ship will be getting ready to move out of the harbor in fifteen minutes from now. For those who will be boarding, please hurry and put your bags through the designated checkpoints for standard search and to have your person be searched for any illegal possessions on your person. Also, any people with third class tickets on them must go through the medical inspection in order to declare whether or not you have any kind of lice or other medical condition that could make the entire ship sick. Failure to comply with either of these will result in the inability to board. I repeat...,"

"I suggest that we put this conversation on hold until we board the ship," Dr. Robotnik suggested as he picked up some luggage as Rouge picked up a few. "It wouldn't do to come all the way here and miss boarding the craft simply because of distractions from idle chatter. That would be quite unfortunate after going through all the trouble of securing these tickets and not being able to use them.

"Shadow, do you mind helping us take care of some of this luggage?" the man called out to his son who looked over the roof of the car upon hearing his name being called. "We need to hurry and get these bags checked over by the ship crew lest it drags on and forces us to miss our chance at making a new life for ourselves."

"I'll be right there, father," the black hedgehog responded with a small nod of his head before quickly turning back to Jet and saying goodbye to him for the last time. The bird then walked around the front of the vehicle and opened the driver's side of the vehicle in preparation to leave.

"Oh, don't you worry about the bag checkpoints," the woman responded with a sly smile on her lips as she began walking into the crowd with her bags in hand and towards the nearest crew member that was checking bags. "I know of a way for us to get through it quickly with little hassle."

"Wait for us Rouge," the man called out just as the teen came from around the car and took a few bags into his arms after securely closing the trunk. "The harbor is no place for a woman like yourself to be wandering without a man escorting you. Come on Shadow, we best catch up to her before she gets herself lost." He then called out behind his shoulder to Jet just before he shut the car door, "Thank you for your services Jet. Your payment has already been sent through the mail, and you should receive it shortly."

"I'm sure that Rouge can take care of herself being that she's helped run an entire business on her own," the black hedgehog murmured under his breath that was drowned out by the loud noise at the harbor and went unheard by his father. He then added thoughtfully to himself with bitterness he dared not show outwardly in front of him, _You just want to make sure nothing bad happens to her before we're supposed to be married. I'm all for making sure that she doesn't get hurt here, but I'd wish you'd worry about her wellbeing for reasons other than her money that you'll inherit after our matrimony ceremony. At the least, you could try showing the same amount of care you have for her money on me, your only son._

After traversing through the dense crowd for no more than a minute, the two managed to find Rouge and catch up with her. Even if they were not so close to her, they could have easily spotted her amongst the other people because she was the only woman with a beautiful green hat with a peacock feather on top. That was when they noticed she was standing in front of a man dressed in a blackish blue jacket with a black hat on top emblazoned with an anchor sewn in yellow string. It was clear that he was a worker of the grand ship and quite possibly one of the designated checkpoint areas for passengers and their bags.

"Are you and the two men behind you going to come aboard?" the man addressed the woman as he looked at the bags in their hands. After receiving a small nod that was accompanied with a small smile that could easily enchant a small child and possibly a very gullible man, he said, "I'll have to ask that you leave your bags here momentarily and allow me to go through them for anything not allowed on the ship. You all have quite a lot on your hands, so I'm afraid that the ship will be just about done boarding by the time I'm through, meaning that it'll be quite a rush for you to board."

"Oh, there's no need for you to bother with going through all of our bags here," she said in a tone that was so sweet it could easily catch a grown man off guard and not knowing how to act. The man's resolve had wavered slightly upon hearing the fluidity of her words accompanied by her captivating voice. She then opened her purse and pulled out a few bills, took the man's arm with her free hand, and tenderly placed them into his open hand. She then said, "Can you please do us this one little favor and allow us to move pass this checkpoint and right to the ship? It would save all of us a lot of time, and it would make your job a lot less strenuous. I'm sure this will compensate you for both your troubles and the long hours you surely work here."

"I-I don't know," the man replied skeptically with a slight stutter to his words as he stood unsure of what he should do at this point. He looked down at his hand and saw that there were three bills in there, each of them valued at a hundred dollars. Although he made no move to return the money back to Rouge, he added in a clearer tone, "Rules dictate that I should check every passenger's luggage before allowing them to pass. That and I should also conduct a medical check for any lice of sorts, but you're all clearly first class members, so that's already out of the question."

"Oh, I understand completely how you feel about this," the bat responded in an understanding tone with a smile that was brighter than a hundred watt bulb. She then dug into her purse again and pulled out three more bills while saying in an even sweeter voice, "It is your job to make sure that everybody who boards the boat doesn't bring on any undesirable belongings with them. However, I do hope that you'll be able to do this one small favor for little old me and overlook us. You see, my party and I have been looking forward to this maiden voyage for the longest of times, and we would hate to miss the boarding call simply because we got held back here at the checkpoint. Won't you please let us skip the baggage check and go straight onto the grand ship?"

With the three extra bills added to the others already in his hand, the man barely managed to count all of them and realize that he had now been offered six hundred dollars just to bend the rules. In this tough economic time, to be able to earn such an amount in a short amount of time was a reality turned into a simple farfetched dream that only fools dared to dream. After his moment of shock had worn off, he pocketed the money in his hand with no hesitation and shot a welcoming smile to Rouge and the other two behind her while tipping his hat off and bowing slightly towards them, clearly accepting her proposal.

_That's her plan on helping us get through here without having to go through the luggage check?_ Shadow thought with a raised eyebrow as he watched the man slowly starting to consider accepting the rather generous offer being offered to him. _I can't believe that she's actually bribing the poor man into getting us out of this checkpoint at the risk of him getting into trouble if his boss finds out about it. If I'm going to have to marry her just to satisfy my dad, then she best start learning that bribing others isn't always going to give her the results she wants. Knowing how tight money is for everybody right now, I wouldn't be surprised if the checkpoint man actually accepted the offer._

"Well, I suppose I can overlook just one group of people's bags this time around," the man finally replied as he tried to sound and act as casual as possible so as to not arouse suspicion from those around him, "especially since you're willing to pay me so much for my cooperation in this kind of economy."

"Why, it's my pleasure to help better the life of someone whenever I can," Rouge happily responded as Dr. Robotnik and the black hedgehog walked towards the plank with their bags in hand that connected the harbor with a door on the side of the ship a few paces away from them. She failed to notice the eye roll she got from her young fiancé as he passed her by along with the look of disapproval written plainly on his face. "Thank you for letting us pass without having to go through the bag checkpoint."

"Well, it's my pleasure to allow your wonderful presence aboard the ship, madam," the man responded as he happily waved towards her while she started to catch up with the two others ahead of her. "And allow me to be the first to welcome you and your party aboard the wondrous passenger cruise liner, the _Titanic_."

* * *

Well, there you have it. Now you know where this story is going to be based on. Yes, the game "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" was based inside the interior of a ship designed similarly to that of the Titanic. To be more precise, it was modeled after its sister ship, the Gigantic. For those of you who've played this game already, hope you enjoyed it. For those who didn't, I recommend that you try it out if you have a DS.

Anyway, that's enough about a game that's probably the most captivating one I've ever played. I basically came up with the idea to write this after playing a game in the setting much like the Titanic and soon chose to use the Sonic universe as a base for it. It was something that suddenly popped into my head, and I could not think of any other game that would work as well for what I had in mind than the Sonic universe.

Sorry if I bored you all with my probably pointless rant. Hope you enjoyed this new story I made. Don't forget to leave a review saying how I did. Until the next update everybody!


	2. A Poker Twist of Fate

Hello everybody! Here's the next chapter in this story. Actually, it's kind of the second part of the first chapter, only it's now concentrated on the other main characters of the story. That's kind of why this chapter is here so quickly, because it's basically a continuation of the first chapter. Apart from the sort of serious nature of the first chapter, I tried to make this one a bit more playful and funny.

Anyway, I hope that you will all enjoy this new chapter. Don't forget to leave a review after you're done reading this.

**

* * *

Chapter 2: A Poker Twist of Fate**

"Ha, that's another win for us!" a loud and rather obnoxious voice exclaimed with excitement inside one of the few buildings that were lined up along the Robotropolis Harbor and overlooking the horizon line. "That makes it three wins in a row for us and only one for you two. How's it feel to have your money slip away from right before your very eyes and knowing that there's nothing you can do about it?"

This burst of excitement was currently happening inside a building that was situated just pass the baggage checkpoints set up along the entrance to the harbor itself. To be more specific, it was taking place inside the seaside pub that was currently packed with people both waiting for their chance to board the new ship docked outside and those who came to say their final goodbyes to their loved ones. Being that it was a publicly owned building; people who only went to have a drink inside or wanted to see the moment when the grand ship docked outside set off on its maiden voyage were allowed passage beyond the checkpoint.

In a far corner of this crowed place next to a rather grimy window that let in little light sat a group of four hunched around a table filled with cups, bottles of both alcohol and soft drinks, and some simple playing cards. Two of them looked to have been in their thirties or so while the others seemed to almost be at the age of adulthood. It was clear by the good abundance of money seen there that they were currently engaged in a game of gambling that had turned intense at some point. It was also clear that they were playing in pairs, what with one side acting all happy and hoarding in the cash that was at the center while the other two were sulking and had sour looks on their faces.

"So we're right now in a small slump here," one of the losing pair, an echidna with red quills that doubled up as dreads, responded cockily as his sour look was quickly replaced with a smirk. "That's nothing for us to go worrying about. I'm just waiting for the right time to make you two lose big time."

"That's right Knuckles," the echidna's partner, a blue hedgehog with quills that were probably just as sharp, said confidently. "Don't start getting yourselves too cocky unless you want to have the biggest upset of your lives. All we need here to beat you both are the right cards to make their way to us before we can royally beat your butts into the next continent and back with momentum to spare."

"Oh, shut up Sonic!" the other known as Knuckles spat out as he shot a piercing glare at his partner, immediately letting go of his cocky attitude and letting the aggravation in his voice show how he was really feeling. "It's your fault that we're losing a good chunk of our savings here. I told you to let me handle all the bets and raising and just call if you think your hand's good or fold if it's bad. Oh, why did I agree to play this game with someone so wet behind the ears in this game like you?"

"Well, sorry for helping you lose all of your precious money, but they did say it was a two-on-two poker game, and I was the only one nearby that you trusted enough to play with," the hedgehog said defensively with a frown as he brought all the cards in front of him and began to shuffle them. "This is the first time that I ever played this game with someone other than you, you know? Besides, why don't you think of it this way? At least you're losing a good chunk of your money through me rather than some stranger who you might think was purposely throwing that game to them."

"I'm starting to think that's the case with you right now, you stupid poker-amateur hedgehog," Knuckles grumbled angrily under his breath while throwing an evil scowl at his playing partner. He then emphasized, "And that's _our_ hard-earned chunk of money you're losing here."

"Hey, I don't think your partner is stupid," one of the guys from the opposite side responded with a thick Australian accent behind his words. "He's a pretty smart player if he keeps raising on hands that mean nothing to him. I think of it as him being charitable and just giving away his money to us."

"Oh, put a cork in it Dingo before you another stupid comment flies out of your mouth," his partner, a skinny person who looked to be a grayish brown furred wolf wearing a white shirt and blue jeans, said with a roll of his eyes at his playmate that looked to be like an overly large orange pit bull with spots of orange here and there. The other two only watched with raised eyebrows as they watched the exchange unfold. "The only thing you're good for is playing poker, not making comments that don't even make the slightest bit of sense. Just concentrate on trying to drive these two into bankrupt."

"Uh, what does bankrupt mean Sleet?" the big animal asked with a questioning look on his face as he tried to scratch an itch through the tough material of his well-worn denim jeans. Apparently, he was not the sharpest of needles when it came to having knowledge of everyday words and such, yet he seemed contempt enough to win in a game of poker as testament to the medium-sized stack that sat in front of him. "Does that mean that we're going to go and disrupt a bank or something?"

"Oh, never mind," the wolf named Sleet sighed in clear frustration as he picked up a cup filled with some kind of brownish liquid and gulped it down in one go. He then picked up a bottle marked "Whiskey" and poured himself another cup of the stuff as he said, "Let's just hurry up and get on with this game. Mind you that we probably only have enough for one more game though since Dingo and I will be boarding that wonderful ship docked out there, the well acclaimed _Titanic_."

"Aww, you guys got tickets to go on it?" Sonic asked as he began to pass the cards around to everybody until they all had two with them. He then added as he set down the deck and poured himself a drink from another bottle marked "Pepsi", "Man, you guys are really lucky to have gotten your hands on them, you know? I hear that the tickets for any class level sold out quickly within the first week they were on the market."

"Well, it's only fitting that two of the best Texas Hold'Em poker players here in Robotropolis would have more than enough money to afford a ticket on a ship that's said to be quite brilliant and lavish," Sleet said in a goading tone as he took a look at the cards in front of them before once again hiding them on the surface of the table after placing a dollar in the central cash pool as the ante price. "That and we felt it was high time that we move onto a different continent and try our luck at the game elsewhere."

"Uh, I thought you said that you wanted to visit your mother back in Port Mobius," Dingo responded, enticing small chuckles from both Sonic and Knuckles that they kept hidden behind their cups after they threw in their respective antes. He did not seem to notice them or the very embarrassing comment he just made as he took the bottle of alcohol and poured some into his cup, "You told me that you wanted to surprise her by showing up unannounced in front of her doorstep."

"You best shut that inferior mouth of yours right now before I shove this bottle of Whiskey straight down your throat, bottle and all!" the yellow eyed wolf growled as he violently ripped the bottle out of the big orange dummy's hand and brandished it threateningly in front of his face, earning him a small flinch from the other. The other two continued to laugh as they placed their cups down and looked at their respective cards in front of them to see what they were playing with.

"How about we hurry up with this last game so you can go home to mommy dearest?" Knuckles asked with another small bout of chuckles as he poured himself a cup of Pepsi. "I'm sure she wouldn't like it if you missed your ship back home because of a holdup in this poker game."

"Oh, I doubt that you'll be laughing by the time we're done with this last game," the man said as he looked at his cards one more time and gave off a rather secretive smirk that looked to have been combined with a very annoyed scowl. "In fact, let's see if you'll continue to laugh once you see how much money I'm forcing you both to commit to!"

With that said, he picked up a few bills from his pile, all of them marked as fives, and threw them to the center of the table. He also took the liberty of "helping" Dingo put his portion of the ante in at the same time. Being that the round itself had barely even started, such a big bet took both of the Pepsi drinking guys by surprise. They even did a double take with their cards and looked at them to see if they were confident enough to play along with such a bet right at the start of things.

"You're seriously putting in twenty-five dollars at this point of the game?" the red echidna questioned after counting what was put in while his partner began counting what little he had left in his personal cash pool. "That's a lot of money to be throwing in pre-flop during an economy as bad as this. You're either still steamed at your partner, or you're real confident with those two cards under your name there. Which is it?"

"As if I'd ever tell you what I got on me here. If you really want to figure out what I have on me, how about putting some of that money into the pot and see whether or not I'm making a stupid call."

"Damn, what am I supposed to do here now?" he mumbled under his breath as he scrunched his eyebrows together and thought hard and carefully at the situation in front of him. "This is my last chance to try and at least mitigate my losses here. Oh, this is the most infuriating thing you guys have done to me!"

"Do you think you could hurry it up before we miss our ship?" Dingo asked as he began to space out and look at the many people inside the bar with them. Some were even starting to leave with pieces of papers in their hands that were most likely tickets allowing them to board the Titanic.

"For once, I agree with Dingo here," Sleet agreed as he too watched the crowd in the bar slowly lessen. "You either play the hand or forfeit it altogether. It isn't that hard of a decision for you two to make."

"And now you're setting a time limit on us, huh?" Sonic asked as he took a quick sip of his drink before looking at his money pile again. He had just finished counting it and discovered that he had thirty dollars left to his name. "If that's the case, then one of us has to make a move sooner or later. In other words," he added as he made a move to get the desired amount of money out of his pot and into the cash pool, "I'll go ahead and call."

"Sonic!" Knuckles exclaimed when he saw what his amateur partner had done. "I'm trying to _mitigate_ our damages here. You just threw all that effort down the toilet, you know that? I swear that I'm going to kill you the moment we lose this game!"

"Do you really have that little faith in me on this?" the blue hedgehog asked with a smirk on his face. That quickly disappeared when he saw the angry snarl on his partner's face. "Never mind, don't answer that. Look, I'm pretty sure I know what I'm doing here. I know that I'm not the best of players when it comes to this game, but please just try to trust me on this for once. I'm sure that I can win this for us if things end up working out."

"Well, it looks like we have two cocky people ensnared by the tangles of this game," the wolf said as he began to lick his chops. "With your partner in, you might as well commit yourself into the game as well. Knowing how terrible your partner has been playing, you're probably the only one able to save both of your monetary asses."

All the hot-headed echidna could do here was growl in frustration as he began to calculate how much money he had in his personal stash. After confirming that he had fifty on him, he spent another second thinking before unwillingly parting with half of his pool and putting it into the betting circle.

"Heh, this looks like it's going to be a fun game," Dingo said as he eagerly accepted himself into the game without hesitation. "One of us is going to be leaving with big money after this game."

"Looks like we're about to find out, aren't we?" Sonic replied cockily as he picked up the deck of cards and threw down the first three cards on top face up on the table surface. They were revealed to be an ace, a six, and a five, all of them diamonds. "Here's some new cards to play with. What are you going to do now?"

"I think I'm going to put some more pressure on you two," Sleet said slyly as he dipped into his pool of cash, clearly the biggest out of the four of them, and placed a fifteen dollar bet into the betting pool. "Are you willing to risk every single penny under your name here, or are you going to chicken out?"

For a few seconds, the blue hedgehog shifted his eyes from the pot now twenty dollars more expensive and the measly five dollars left in front of him. If he wanted to commit to the game, he would be forced to forfeit what little he had and ride the monetary wave to the bitter end. He took another sip of his Pepsi as he ran the only two choices in his head. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Knuckles pleading with his own eyes to just fold the hand and be done with it. He was clearly concerned with how bad things might turn out.

"...Alright, I accept your little challenge Sleet," he answered after a few seconds of suspenseful silence around the table as he placed his final bill into the pool. "I'll put my whole self into this last hand and hope that I'll get real lucky."

"Oh, Sonic," the red echidna said with a groan that sounded borderline sickly. To be quite honest, he was looking quite pale and seemed to be ready to keel over at any moment.

"And how about you Knuckles?" Dingo asked as he seemed to completely ignore the sickly look the other was showing. "Are you smart enough to play like your partner is right now?"

"I hardly call his style of playing smart," the echidna managed to squeak out with another sickly groan leaving his lips. He then placed his hand into his cash pool hesitantly and placed the necessary amount into the cash pool saying, "I don't think I have much of a choice but to play this hand if I want to reverse the damage a certain hedgehog has done here."

"Well, this thing is starting to get bigger and bigger," the orange dog exclaimed happily as he once again placed his amount into the pot without any hesitation.

Without saying anything, Sonic took the next card from the top of the deck and laid it face up next to the other three. Once he took his hand off of it, it was revealed to be a seven of hearts.

"My, this is an interesting card you put down for us," Sleet said as he was clearly seen hesitating upon seeing the card. However, it only lasted less than a second before he returned to his cocky game attitude. "Hmm, I suppose this is a sign that I should slow down a bit. Then again, I've already got you committed into this pot all the way, so I might as well follow it."

With that said, the wolf simply took one five dollar bill from his pile and placed it gingerly into the pot as if it were some kind of bomb.

"I guess I should take the fact that you're finally starting to slow down as a good sign," Knuckles said with some newfound confidence as he carefully considered the new card in front of him. Being that Sonic had nothing else to bet with and was already forced to play through the entire game regardless of how he felt about the new card, his turn was skipped. He then raised the stakes by shoving his entire pool into the pot, which only held ten dollars in it. "Then how about I go ahead and put a raise and an all-in on my end here? I have a feeling that you just lost out on whatever it is you had planned. And to make things more interesting," he added as he began to dig into the small travel bag he had at his side and pulled out something that looked like a gold pocket watch, "I'll put this into the pot for the taking. I'll put this up for twenty dollars if that's alright with all of you. That puts my raise up to thirty."

"Kn-Knuckles?" Sonic questioned with a raised eyebrow at his partner's sudden change in attitude. "Uh oh, I think the thought of losing so much money has gotten to his head and turned him insane."

"Oh, the bet's now thirty dollars," the big orange dog said as he had his eyes on the shiny gold pocket watch before digging into his travel bag and took out a couple of papers. "Then how about I do the same thing as you and put all my money in along with these?"

"W-wait a minute Dingo!" the wolf exclaimed as he tried to stop his playing partner from putting both the money and the unknown piece of papers into the pot, but he was one second too late. He then asked slowly as if he were getting ready to blow, "Please tell me honestly just what it was you put into the pot along with your money."

"Oh, I only put in our ship tickets into the pot," the other explained calmly, seemingly not knowing what he had just done or noticing the seething gaze that was now on him. "It only seemed fair to do that since he put his gold thingie into the pot."

For a moment, the entire table was silent. The two young players were surprised at what had just been put into the pot, while Sleet was busy breathing heavily through his nose as steam started to blow out of his ears.

"...You...idiot!" he shouted so loud that everything inside the bar stopped and directed their attention at the scene unfolding. "What in damn hell's name were you thinking? I paid good money for that, and I'll be damned if that's being put up for the pot! You better take those papers out of there before I kill you!"

"Uh, I might not be the greatest of players here, but I don't think you can take back a call once it's been made," Sonic cautiously said as he fiddled with the edges of the cards in front of him.

"Anything that's been put in the pot and officially out of the hands of the caller is forced to stay in the game," Knuckles confirmed, his voice reflecting the same kind of shock his partner was feeling. "It's only fair."

"Only fair my ass! Oh, you better hope that the next card that comes out of this is a godsend for me. Otherwise, I'll be taking out the cost of those tickets out of your ass Dingo! Now hurry up and get that last card out of here before I punch in your nose, you annoying blue squirt."

"Hey, I resent that, you big old wolf!" the blue hedgehog countered cautiously before quickly regretting what he said. He was now the target of a gaze that could have possibly burned him to the ground if it had laser vision. In hopes of appeasing the other's anger, he quickly took the final card from the top of the deck and revealed it to be an ace of hearts.

Once the card had been revealed, whatever anger Sleet was exuding had all but disappeared, and a grand smile suddenly replaced his angry frown. Apparently, this card was the godsend he was ranting on about just a few seconds ago.

"Well, talk about having the Devil's luck," he mumbled under his breath, slightly freaking the people around the table sans Dingo a bit at his sudden mood change. "I'm sorry to burst your bubble boys, but I'm afraid that this game is all mines. Being that you all now have no money on you, I'll just go ahead and check this turn. Now who wants to reveal what they have first?"

"For some reason, I don't like where this is going right now," Knuckles said as he regained the groan he thought he had abandoned back when the fourth card made its appearance. "I guess I'll just get it over with and show mines first."

A second later, he flipped over the two cards in his possession and allowed everybody on the table to see what he had. They were a four of spades and an eight of clovers. When combined with the six, five, and seven on the table, he had a straight to call his very own on this game.

"Hey, I got that beat!" Dingo responded happily as he quickly flipped over his cards to reveal his cards. They were a two and a jack, both of them diamonds. In conjunction with the other three diamonds on the table, the humongous dog had a flush, a set that just beat Knuckles' straight.

"What?" the red echidna exclaimed as he saw the bad news spelled out before him as clear as day. "How the hell could you beat me there? That was the best hand I got the entire game. Damn it!"

"Well, it sounds like your attempts at trying to repair the damage your partner created has fallen down the proverbial cliff," the wolf said with a chuckle that sounded borderline evil rumbling from the back of his throat. "Unfortunately, you would have lost to me if you had managed to beat Dingo's hand. Allow me to show you why."

And with a cocky flick of his wrist, he flipped one card over with the other and exposed their contents to the world. He had a pair of aces in his hand, news that caused great dread in Knuckles when he saw it. With the two other aces out on the field, it graced him with a terribly strong hand, a four of a kind.

"F-f-four aces...?" the echidna stuttered as his eyes laid witness to one of the biggest hands he has ever seen during a live poker game. He then repeated in a clearer tone, "four aces? You...have got to be kidding me!"

"Oh, I assure you; there's nothing to kid about here. I told you I got the Devil's luck when your partner drew that card from the deck. I suppose I have him to thank for winning this game since he was the one who shuffled the entire deck."

"Four aces, huh?" Sonic repeated, apparently completely shocked at seeing such strength in the form of cards in front of him. "I never thought I'd see such a high set here."

"Yeah, well it's a strong hand that's practically drove us into the poor house! Just what the hell were you thinking when you decided to accept Sleet's bet and go all-in Sonic? This is all your fault, you know that?"

"I do hate to rub salt into such a freshly open wound," the wolf stated snidely as he reveled at the sight of his two opponents completely broken beyond repair, "but I don't believe that your friend has shown us what he has in his hands. Not that it matters to me, but I am curious as to what he was playing with that made him act so cockily to begin with. Do you mind showing us, or are you just going to leave us in the dark forever?"

"Are you sure you want to see it, big guy?" the blue hedgehog asked, his voice unchanging as the shock was clearly still in his system.

"Come on; I'm also curious to see what you have there," Dingo said with a hint of anxiety in his words, clearly not noticing that his partner had practically just bagged the entire game for them.

"Alright, if you really want to see it," he said with a small shrug as he showed his hand to everybody at the table.

When the cards were revealed, everybody had differing reactions to it. Knuckles was still in shock; however, it was for a reason entirely different from earlier. Dingo, the player who was usually oblivious to the things around him, instantly froze when he saw what was laid out before him. Sleet stood stone still, his breath caught at the back of his throat and his eyes boring down at the two cards staring right back at him. His mouth was slightly agape and looked as if there were the beginnings of some foam forming at the corners. Sonic's attitude was still in shocked, but they now knew for what reason he was acting like that.

The two cards that he had in his possession were the same as his partner had, a four and an eight and giving him a straight. However, this was not just any kind of straight. Both of the numbers were diamonds, fusing together with the other three on the field and also giving him a flush. And since he had a straight and a flush at the same time, he had what was known as a straight flush, a combo that just beat a four of a kind.

"Oh my freaking god...!" all three at the table amazingly exclaimed at the same time as they saw the hand in front of him. Sonic had finally changed his facial expression and had an extremely triumphant smile on his face. Then Knuckles said out loud with an equally triumphant smile on him, "Do you know what you just did buddy? You just won one of the biggest pots I've ever played in my entire life! My god, I can't believe you actually did it!"

"I told you that you needed to put a little faith in me on this hand," the blue hedgehog simply said as he allowed himself to take pride at the grief he caused both Sleet and Dingo. He then started to collect some of the money in the pot and pocket it before picking up the tickets on the top of the pot and looked at it. "And it seems like I made a good gamble here. I managed to snag us a couple of third class tickets aboard the Titanic!"

"Whoo-hoo!" the echidna whooped as he quickly took all of the money on the table and shoved it into his travel bag along with the pocket watch he put on the betting table. Besides a spare shirt, pants, and some clean underwear in it, there was nothing inside before the big windfall of money came around. "I can't believe that we're now able to get onto the Titanic now! From now on, I'll put a lot more faith on you in these games. God, this is the happiest day of my life! To think that we're actually able to get onto one of the most talked about ships and sail all the way to Mobius...!" he added with a dreamy sigh.

"I'm afraid you won't be able to do that boys," a man called out from somewhere across the pub. When they turned to see who was addressing them, they saw that it was the bartender in his standard white uniform standing behind the counter who had heard their excited outburst and apparently caught every word of it. "It's right now eleven fifty-five. The ship leaves at the harbor at the top of the hour."

"Aw crap, we gotta make a run for it if we want to get on!" Sonic exclaimed as he quickly left a twenty on the table to pay for their drinks before picking up his bag, its contents similar to that of Knuckles, and ran as fast as he could out the door. His red echidna buddy soon followed suit and was right at his heels. Still at the table was a couple of shell-shocked men known as Sleet and Dingo.

"...I...I...," the wolf stuttered, trying to get the words out his mouth. "I'm...going to...to kill you Dingo."

"Uh, I'm sorry?" Dingo tried to apologize in a tone that made him sound like a child about to be spanked by his mother.

Instead of answering the big dog's rather meek answer, the wolf threw a fist right at his face and connected it to his nose with a sickening crunch. He was sent flying off the chair with small droplets of blood flying away and towards the ground, the other soon following him down and pulling the both into a fist fight filled with both intense anger and shock at losing such an extreme amount of money. Everybody in the pub quickly cleared out of the building, none of them wanting to even attempt to break them apart since they knew where the anger was being extracted from and not wanting it to be taken out on them.

* * *

Hope you all like this new chapter. I tried to make it funny at the end after subjugating you all to all the boring poker talk and stuff. Hopefully it was enough for you all to hear of the shocked expressions everybody had on them when they saw Sonic's hand, which is probably the ultimate hand in Texas Hold'Em for those of you who never played or watched the game being played before.

For those of you who have read my other story, "Jak and Daxter: The Unrestriction", I have not given up on that at all. I am just taking a very small break from it so I can at least get the base of this story out of my head. That way, it will be out of my head and not always buzzing around and serving as a distraction while I'm working on my other stories.

Anyway, please leave a review before you start catching up on your next story. Until the next update everybody!


	3. Sailing on the Ship of New Beginnings

Hello everybody. How's everybody doing? Thank the lord and all the patience I had wearing thin that this site finally saw it fit to fix the problem. I've been having this chapter at the ready for the past two weeks, probably right on the day when this whole stupid crap started acting up. Sorry for making you all wait because of the site forcing me to make you all wait and drive me crazy at the same freaking time.

Anyway, hope that you all end up enjoying this chapter. This one was a bit hard for me to write the second half on. I'll let you guys be the judge, which is what I always do for all of my chapters, to see how well I wrote it out.

Don't forget to leave a review after you're done reading this chapter before you move on to something else. They are very well appreciated, and I do read them and take into account any advice you might have.

**

* * *

Chapter 3: Sailing Aboard the Ship of New Beginnings**

"Move it or lose it people!" Sonic shouted loudly as he tried to make his way through the terribly crowded harbor as quickly as he could. Being that he had less than five minutes to make it to the third class boarding section of the ship; he was desperate to try anything short of purposefully shoving people painfully down to the ground in order to get there. "If you're not getting on the Titanic, then please hurry up and get out of my way. I'm running late to board the ship, and I'm not about to miss it for the life of me!"

"Hey, wait for me Sonic!" Knuckles called out about a foot or so away from the blue hedgehog's position. Unlike his buddy, he was having a bit of a harder time maneuvering through the crowd because people were too busy wondering what the commotion the other was making to pay any attention to the red echidna. "You know I can't run as fast as you can, especially in a crowd as thick as this. At least have the decency to drag me by the arm with you before you decide to leave me eating your dust!"

"Sorry, but we don't got a lot of time to be waiting around for you," the one in front called back behind him without turning his head as he continued to force his way through whatever opening he could find, causing his exclamation to almost fall upon deaf ears amidst the increasing crowd as the departure time grew nearer. "You'll just have to try and put some more effort in it. I'll try to stall they guy at the docking station when I get there, so you better make good with that extra time and catch up!"

"You...!" the red furred guy started to say before he felt a face full of person collide full on with him, sending him stumbling backwards a bit before regaining his balance. Without wasting any time seeing who it was he ran into and barely registering the fact that he had somehow managed to dodge a punch from said unknown man, he continued to bob and weave through the crowd while desperately trying to keep his eyes on the shocking cobalt fur that was a known trademark of his buddy. "Damn it, you better not leave me behind or you'll live to regret it when I get my hands on you!"

Not even bothering to answer his angry friend's barely audible rant, Sonic pushed through gap after painfully small gap of people. More than once he almost lost grip of his bag and tightly held onto the strap as if it were a lifeline. In a sense, that was what it was since it housed the two blessed tickets that he was extremely lucky enough to win in the poker game just a minute or so ago. He momentarily thought back to how Sleet and Dingo had reacted and wondered what they were doing now but quickly let it leave his mind as he concentrated solely on trying to beat the tight timeframe the clock had them working with.

With every step he took closer to the designated boarding station, he more he felt like the crowd was getting thicker. The effort it took for him to shove on through seemed to increase with every passing second as the adrenaline continued to pump faster and fiercer through his veins, giving him a slight headache from the sudden rush. He ignored it and continued to press on as if his life were on the line and that there were a couple of gunmen hot on his tail wanting to catch him and shoot him dead. In actuality, the only person chasing him was none other than his best buddy from just about the time he was able to walk and talk up until now.

In two minutes worth of time that felt more like two hours, Sonic finally made it to the designated docking stations on the harbor. The crowd was a lot thinner than it was in the assumed spectator area, but it was still crowded enough that he still had to do some minor pushing and shoving in order to progress further. Through the now wider gaps in between people, he managed to see a section named, "First Class Boarding Station". The docking plank that was connecting the deck to a door on the side of the ship was now being pulled in, thus signifying that they were just about done accepting people onto the grand vessel.

"Aw come on!" the cobalt hedgehog exclaimed as he used this as an excuse to obtain another sudden burst of adrenaline and forced his legs to work harder. He soon felt himself running at a pace he did not think was possible for him to do until now. "That third class docking plank had better not be pulling out now. I hope I still have time. They haven't stated pulling out the second class plank yet."

With that in mind leading to the hope that they have yet to also start pulling away the third class plank, he continued to weave through the crowd that got progressively thinner the further away he ran from the spectator area. Chancing a glance over his shoulder, he saw Knuckles barely passing by the first class plank that had just finished retracting and trying to desperately catch up without falling anymore behind than he was now. By the time the echidna had reached the area around the second class plank, it had started to retract away from its designated door. Turning his gaze back to the path ahead of him, he noticed the third and final boarding plank, the third class boarding section, in front of him. There was a man dressed in a full black suit that had the insignia of members of the ship crew getting some kind of mechanical machine ready to pull away from the ship.

"Hey, hold that boarding plank!" he yelled at the top of his lungs in an attempt at gaining the shipman's attention above the immense noises of the harbor and prevent him from pulling in the plank. Thankfully, it had exuded the desired effects, and the man stopped what he was doing and looked up to see who it was calling for him to wait a few moments. "You got two more people coming aboard!"

"What?" he said in a questioning tone just as the cobalt hedgehog ran up and stopped right in front of him. He then asked in a voice that was somewhat filled with uncertainty after seeing somebody suddenly appear in right front of his line of vision, "Uh, is everything alright sir? Is there something that I can help you with?"

"Yeah..., you can...help me with something," Sonic panted out as he leaned forward on his knees and tried to catch his breath after the rush of adrenaline in combination with the constant speed walking and shoving. "I'm here to...to board this big ship here. Do you think you can...let both me and...and my buddy on? We were...running a bit late and...just arrived here a...a few minutes ago."

"Do you have the boarding tickets on you?" the man asked, raising an eyebrow when he heard of another person wanting to board yet only seeing one customer in front of him. "You can't board if you don't have them on you."

"Yeah, I got those...two valuable babies on me," the hedgehog replied as he quickly dove his hand into the bag that was left open when he rushed out of the pub and fished out the two boarding tickets. He then thrust them in front of the man who took it and began to quickly examine them to make sure they were the real thing... He even put them up against the light of the sun as if trying to see something that could only be seen through bright light shining through the simple sheet.

"Hmm, everything seems to be in order," he said as he put the paper back to eye level and examined it over once more. "By the way, where's this buddy of yours that you claim wants to board with you? I don't see him anywhere."

"That's because...I was a few paces...behind this deserter!" the angry and slightly wheezing voice of Knuckles was heard saying as he appeared right beside Sonic and was just as breathless as him when he first arrived. He then added as best as he could considering that he had just finished an adrenaline-induced run, "Now you got...two people in front of you...that want to board. Are you happy now?"

"Wow, you two really know how to cut it down to the last minute, do you? Now that you both are here, may I assume that you both passed through the baggage and health inspection checkpoints before coming here?"

"Of course we did," Sonic answered as his breathing finally regained some sense of normalcy, knowing full well in the back of his head that they both did not go through either of those designated checkpoints. This was their one chance at making a new life away from home, and he was not about to flub it up for them by saying they never passed through either of those checks. "I don't think that we'd be standing right here talking to you about this if we ran right through it."

"That and we would've...had a hoard of harbor workers...on our tails trying to make us...go back for the test or...just plain arrest us," the red echidna added as if trying to emphasize the fact that they were at this particular spot legally while regaining his breath a lot quicker than his buddy.

For a couple of short moments that felt like an eternity to the two guys, the ship worker examined their faces as if trying to look for any signs of a lie beyond the tired expression on their faces. After raising his eyebrow once and cocking his head slightly to the side as if he were thinking deeply, he let a sigh escape his lips and folded the two tickets two times in half before putting them into the pocket.

"Alright, you two can go on through," he said with a slight sniff as if he were trying to smell something in the air while moving aside a bit to allow them access through the plank. "Hurry up and get your butts in the ship because I need to get this thing out of here and they're about to close the doors."

"Yes!" the cobalt hedgehog exclaimed excitedly as he immediately began running up the plank towards the door that was about to be closed by another shipman inside. "Thanks a lot!" he shouted back at the other on the dock just as the other man barely moved out of the way in time to avoid getting run over.

"Hey, don't you dare leave me behind again Sonic!" Knuckles shouted out as he began to follow suit. Just as he passed by the second crewman who had to step aside once again, he apologized for both his buddy and himself, "Sorry about us almost running you over man. Thanks for keeping the door open."

"Crazy third class urchins," the man responded bitterly under his breath so that the quickly retreating guys would not hear him. "If they make me work the filthy third class boarding shift again, I swear I'll quit this job and make a new life on Mobius myself. It's not as if the pay's all that great to be giving this up anyway."

Now that they were officially inside the Titanic and running down one of its freshly painted corridors, Sonic began to move at a slower place yet still kept up a semi jog. This allowed the echidna to finally catch up to him, but he was still forced to follow right behind because of the corridor being narrow enough to barely allow two adult-sized people to be walking side by side much less running. That and there were some people moving around trying to move to wherever it is that they wanted to go to, and that made it practically impossible to be side by side.

"Can you actually believe that we're actually on this thing Knuckles?" Sonic asked as he continued to run through the hallway with no particular destination in mind. This earned him strange looks from those around him. "I never thought that I'd be going back home on something so new and beautiful. Just look at how great this place looks. You could probably live here the rest of your life if you wanted to."

"Yeah, but I suggest that you don't go around forgetting about your fear of water," the echidna stated in a matter-of-fact tone as he tried to deflate his buddy's overly energetic behavior before he injured himself or someone around him. Unfortunately, it did not seem to do any good. "I never thought I'd see the day when you would actually decide to willingly go out to sea without knowing a single thing about swimming."

"Well, I'm sure I told you at some point during our friendship that I came from Mobius," the cobalt hedgehog responded as they reached a set of stairs the led upwards and followed it. "Yeah, I don't remember a single thing about it since I was brought here by my uncle Chuck when I was only a few months old, but I always wanted to see what it's like there. This is basically a childhood wish of mine come true, and I'm not about to let some stupid fear of water get in the way of seeing the place where I was born. Besides, I'm sure you'll agree with me that anywhere is better than this dump of a place where the poor get little to no help from the government so that they can get back to their feet."

"Oh, that's definitely something that nobody in their right mind could disagree with you on," the other stated with a small subconscious nod of his head in silent agreement as they reached the end of the fancy blood red carpeted stairs. He then saw a sign bolted down next to him and quickly saw that it read "A Deck, First Class Corridor" on it before they continued on up another small set of stairs. "Anyway, just where is it that you're planning on going right now? I highly doubt that you're right now going on a self-help sightseeing tour and milking in everything you're seeing."

"Actually, I was planning to do that a bit later once we're a good distance away from Robotropolis. I'm thinking about going above deck to see this thing when makes its way out of the harbor right now. This is my first time that I remember being on a ship, and I want it to be as memorable as possible."

"Heh, the only way a trip on a ship as big as this can be memorable is when it starts sinking and all of us are still on it trying to fight for a position on any lifeboats we can get our hands on. Now that would definitely be a killer memory to be filed away in our minds if we survive such a thing happening."

"Hey, don't go jinxing us now. Less being all pessimistic and more thinking about happy thoughts and fun times, alright?"

"Whatever you say," Knuckles responded with a roll of his eyes that was meant to show his annoyance, but the smirk on his lips said otherwise. At this time, they had finished climbing the second set of stairs and reached what they could only assumed to be A Deck, which would also mean that they were now in the First Class section. They were now jogging towards a set of doors that were next to windows that showed a view of the outside, showing them that said door would take them outside and out on the deck.

When Sonic reached the door, he grabbed the doorknob and gave it a small twist before pulling it open. He was greeted with the subtle salty scent of the sea breeze blasting against his face as he breathed it in and walked outside with the echidna right behind him doing the same thing. A moment later, they both notice that they were facing the direction of the harbor itself, looking at the many buildings lining it and the people who had come to see the ship off and say goodbye to their loved ones.

"Man, this is definitely a sight worth seeing," Sonic said loudly over the sounds of cheering people as he began to look for a space to lean against the railing that was crowded full of people of all social classes. "Doesn't all this excitement make you all excited? It's certainly doing that for me right now."

"This kind of excitement doesn't really quite beat that losing feeling I got in the poker game and then figuring out that we actually won," the other responded with a hint of humor in his words as they found a free rail space a few steps ahead of them and leaned against it. "I swear that that'll be something I won't be forgetting anytime soon."

"Hey, that was just a pretty stupid lucky break on my part. I never thought that I'd be able to win such an intense game with an equally intense hand like that. And to think that I was actually trying to pull a bluff on Sleet when he raised us like crazy."

"You were the crazy one to have been playing along with his raise with only a bunch of useless junk in your hand. I still don't understand why you had to go and give me a heart attack by pulling a move as crazy and risky as that."

"Well, I did tell you to have a little faith in me when I made the first call, didn't I? You could have saved yourself all that heartache if you had only listened to me. Besides, I thought that the last hand was going to be a pretty lucky one for me that time around, and I decided to go along with my gut. I didn't think that we'd be able to get that big of a payoff there with one of the biggest hands I've ever had."

"Big payoff and hand or not, please don't ever do that again if and when I ever decide to play tag team poker with you. I don't want to die stressing over a card game that happens to have all of my money in it, you know?"

"Oh, now you're just plain exaggerating there. I know you're not the kind of guy to just go dying on me over something like that. You're too tough to be taken out by anything short of a bullet or a knife being stabbed into your back."

"Thanks for your vote of confidence on my survival skills," Knuckles responded sarcastically as he rolled his eyes at the comment. "It's nice to know that you think I can't sense when it is that someone has a gun trained on me or that I don't know how to disarm someone with something small like a knife."

"But still, when have you ever heard of a couple of seventeen-year-olds like us winning as big a pot as we did in just one damn exciting poker game?" Sonic questioned, either ignoring the sarcastic remark or not catching it amongst all the excitement that was electrifying the air. He then placed a friendly arm over the echidna's shoulder while keeping his eyes glued on the crowd in front of him. "I wouldn't be surprised if we were the first two to have ever pulled off such a crazy stunt and lived to tell the tale."

Suddenly, a loud horn sounded throughout the harbor, effectively drowning out any and all noise that was being made by the crowd. It only lasted for a couple of seconds before it died out and allowed the sound of the excited crowd to dominate once more. Then, the sound of a man yelling over the noise was barely caught over the constant shouting of goodbyes and other loving words being thrown back and forth.

"Every crew member has now safely boarded the ship!" the man, a member of the crew as was indicated by what he had said, was heard yelling out from somewhere that sounded like a far distance away. "We shall now be leaving the harbor in just a few moments!"

A couple of seconds later, Sonic felt a slight rumbling underneath his feet. His view of the docks suddenly started moving a bit towards the left like a backdrop being pulled away by a couple of stagehands.

"Hey Knuckles, we're starting to move out of here!" he exclaimed excitedly as he practically started to jump up and down on his feet like a child excited over a simple piece of candy. "Can you believe it? We're actually starting our sea journey to Mobius! This is definitely one of the best moments of my life."

"Calm down Sonic," Knuckles responded with a chuckle as he was clearly also feeling excited, except it was a lot more toned down than his buddy. "You're going to end up making yourself go overboard before we're even out to sea. You do that now and the ship isn't going to be stopping just to bring you back on, provided that you survive the drowning experience first. And don't even think that I'll jump in to save you if that does happen."

"And here I thought that you were my best friend and all that, willing to save me in a sacrificial fashion when I'm forced to be in a life and death situation," the cobalt hedgehog said in an overdramatically dejected tone as they slowly moved further away from the harbor with the people on both the port and ship shouting and waving goodbyes to each other. "Whatever happened to the promise we made so long ago about watching each other's backs and making sure nothing crazy happens to either of us?"

"It isn't going to be enforced this time around buddy," the flaming red echidna simply stated with a small amused shake of his head before taking a deep breath of the salty air and letting it out slowly. "I'm not about to jump off of a ship I had just got on two minutes ago just to get wet and to haul your butt back to dry land. It doesn't make sense, and I don't like doing things that don't make sense."

"Jeez, talk about hiding a cold heart behind a nice tough guy exterior," the other said with a scowl before paying more attention further out to the harbor for no apparent reason. It was then that he noticed that there was some kind of unnatural activity coming from a building that looked a lot like the pub they had rushed out of earlier.

"What in the world is going on back there at the pub?" Knuckles asked, apparently seeing the same thing the other saw. "It looks like the Robotropolis guards are storming the place for some reason. I thank our lucky stars that we weren't there before they came. That'd definitely have been a lot of trouble we didn't need."

"I'll say. The last thing we needed there was to be caught by them and taken to their jail cell for illegal underage gambling. Hey, wait a minute," Sonic added with a mumble under his breath as he suddenly leaned forward a bit as if wanting to get a better look at something. "Are those guys dragging out who I think it is they're dragging out?"

"What are you talking about?" the echidna asked with a raised eyebrow as he also leaned forward and stared harder at the entrance to the pub. "Wait, isn't that Sleet and Dingo they're pulling out with them? Why in the heck are they being arrested?"

"Might I take a guess at saying that somebody reported a disturbance that we most likely caused after winning all their money? They probably started fighting after we left and ended up getting themselves arrested for that. Oh well, it's not like it's our problem now."

"As if I even wanted it to be my problem to in the first place."

As the seconds passed by and turned into minutes, the Titanic began to move further away from the port. Pretty soon, the sounds of the shouts from the people faded until they were no longer able to be heard, and the crowd along the railing had soon dispersed and turned the area into an almost barren place. Within ten minutes, Robotropolis Harbor had almost completely disappeared beyond the horizon with only the smoke from buildings as indicators that the city was still there.

"Wow, this definitely is the fastest ship that's ever sailed the seas," the cobalt hedgehog exclaimed softly in awe as he continued to look at the horizon line as if trying to keep his sights on the place he had called home for as long as he could. "Out of all the times Uncle Chuck took me down to the harbor to watch the cargo ships move out, it always took almost half an hour before we couldn't see them over the horizon."

Instead of receiving an answer from his buddy, all he heard was relative silence masked by the subtle sounds of people taking a walk on the deck and talking with each other. When he turned his head towards the right, he noticed that Knuckles was no longer there. Rather, he was now lounging away on a white fold-out chair in a center of a wide area full of chairs around tables with umbrellas underneath them and looking like he was trying to take a sunbath with his bag tied securely around one of the legs. Sonic quickly walked over to him and took a seat on another adjacent to him.

"And why did you just leave me there without any warning whatsoever?" he chastised playfully while putting his bag down as the echidna opened one lazy eye and looked at him. I could've been pushed over the railing by some crazy guy and you wouldn't have been there to help me."

"You worry too much, you know that Sonic?" the other responded lazily as he closed his eye and continued to relax under the bright light of the sun. "Why don't you just sit back and relax like I am right now? It'll do wonders for your nerves."

"Oh, very funny Knuckles," Sonic laughed sarcastically before taking him up on the advice and leaning back onto his chair. He then added with a contented sigh, "Let's stop with all this wise talk and just enjoy this miraculous yet well-earned victory."

And that was exactly what they did for the rest of the day. It was not until the sun had set over the horizon did they moved from their spot and went back inside the ship.

"You know, I just remembered something," the cobalt hedgehog said thoughtfully as they started to go down the stairs to the third class deck. "I have no idea which one of these rooms here we're supposed to be staying at."

"That's because you practically rushed up the plank at the first chance you had," the echidna stated as he simply pulled out a piece of paper from his bag and showed the side with writing to the other. On it were words that said, "C Deck, Room 218". "The guy on the harbor gave me this right after you were gone."

"Boy, I'd really be lost without you, wouldn't I?" the other said with a sigh at his own stupidity as they climbed down one more set of stairs that they knew would take them to their designated floor.

With only a chuckle as an answer, the two continued on down until they reached their destination. Once there, they walked around until they found the door that held the room they would be calling home for the next month-and-a-half or so of their sea baring trip.

* * *

Yeah, the ending seemed a bit rushed and kind of smashed together and random than I would've liked it to be. Sorry if that's how it seemed to all of you, but I couldn't find any other way to move on with the story without it feeling overly dragged on. Then again, both of them are very excited to be on board the ship, and people in real life tend to rush through things and mesh them together when they're like that.

Anyway, I hope that you all enjoyed this chapter. And for those of you who are familiar with my writing style and wondering where all the dangerous actions scenes are, this story is but an experiment. I'm trying out my hand at action that concentrates on drama concerning friendship and stuff. Whatever action there is on this is going to be at the end, and I'm sure you all know what will happen at the end, provided you all know the original story of the Titanic.

Don't forget to leave a review on how I did. Until the next update everybody!


	4. A Lonely Black Hedgehog on Board

Hello everybody! Here's a new chapter of this story of mines. Surprisingly, I'm starting to find my ability to write all this drama to become easier. I suppose the old saying "practice makes perfect" really is true. Hope that would also translate in having me keep up with trying to give all of my readers, which is you, some good quality stuff to read while you're on here.

Anyway, I hope that you all enjoyed my other chapters and the attempts at some funnies on my part from Sonic and Knuckles. Hope you also end up enjoying this chapter. Don't forget to leave a review after you're done reading so that I'll know how I'm doing. Any kind of constructive criticism that you can come with, provided that there's any on your part, is always more than helpful. Just don't give me flames or anything that sounds like a flame concealed in the form of a constructive criticism. Until the next update everybody!

* * *

**Chapter 4: A Lonely Black Hedgehog on Board**

"Oh Shadow, isn't it exciting to be standing on the side of the Titanic watching Robotropolis become smaller every minute?" Rouge exclaimed in a calm feminine way as she wrapped her fingers over the railing and looked at the now barely noticeable land in the distance. "I never thought that I'd be able to see our home from such a distance away with such a beautiful view of the sun glazing over it. Don't you think the view is beautiful honey?"

"I suppose it looks nice," Shadow responded uninterestedly as his arms were folded across his chest and a small frown present on his face. It was clear to anybody within the sound of his voice and eyesight of his face that he did not truly enjoy the scenery in front of him. "I'd rather be looking at Robotropolis from inside the city streets than staring at it from out at sea. Makes it seem way too small than it really is."

"Oh, you need to learn how to think more romantically dear," the bat responded sweetly as she let go of the railing and lightly hugged her fiancé in a loving embrace. "Don't you think the slight orange hue in the sky due to the slowly setting sun makes the entire ocean look beautiful? I've never seen anything more beautiful in my entire life, and you're talking to a woman who's made a living designing and creating luxury clothing."

"I don't think it's that much of a good reason to get all excited over," the ebon hedgehog sighed out as he mindlessly stroked along one of the red streaks on his quills with his white gloved hand. "It's not like you never seen the sun set over the sea before. It's a commonly reoccurring thing that happens every twenty-four hours."

"My, someone's feeling a bit bitter today. Why don't you tell me what it is that's bothering you this afternoon? I don't think I've ever seen you with something eating away at your mind like this. Come on, you know you can tell me what's wrong."

"I'm sure that you, of all people, should know what's wrong with me. I never wanted to leave Robotropolis for one single second. No one even saw fit to ask for my opinion first before going to buy tickets on the next ocean liner out of there. At the very least, my father could have given me some time to say goodbye to the friends I was forced to leave behind without any warning or explanation whatsoever. Imagine how they'll feel once they notice me gone for over a week and see that I'm not even at home."

"I'm sure your friends will understand and come to accept the fact that you're no longer there with them in time. I must admit, though, that the idea to move to Mobius with hardly any warning from your father was quite the surprise. I barely had enough time to put all my affairs in town myself before we had to leave. He was always a man who preferred to bide his time and wait for the right moment rather than rush into a single idea, although I can clearly see why he had to make an exception at this time."

"He could've tried to start over with a new job or try to rebuild off of his old one. He didn't have to go and drag me into his money woes and force me to follow him around as if I were still a ten-year-old hedgehog."

"You really are bitter about this whole affair, aren't you?" Rouge stated with a frown approaching her beautiful face. She then said in a loving tone with ever the smallest hints of seductiveness that could have been easily missed by anybody, "Well, I'm sure that I'll be able to help you unwind and forget some of your troubles tonight."

"I thank you for the offer Rouge, but I'm afraid that I'll have to pass on that," Shadow responded politely, cleverly masking the disgust he felt bubbling in his chest and easily catching the seductive tone in his fiancée's voice as if it was being shouted out at him. "Besides, I don't like the thought of performing premarital sexual activities with my soon-to-be wife. That and I'm sure that my father feels the same as I do on that."

"Darn, and here I thought that I'd be able to reel you into the bed with me tonight," the bat stated with a small playful pout as she turned back towards the railing and placed her hands on it once more. "Oh well, you can't necessarily blame a girl for trying, especially when the girl trying is the one you're going to be marrying as soon as we land and settle in to our new home in the lands of Mobius. Then again, I'm surprised that you haven't had any other girls asking you to come over and show them the time of their lives. You're definitely too cute of a guy for any girl to pass up, you know that? You're too cute for your own good."

"If you want to help get my mind off the frustration of this unnecessary move my father has us going on, then please try a tactic other than wanting to participate in explorative activities in bed or attempting to impress me with remarks that are neither flattering or enticing," the hedgehog responded bluntly as he moved away from the railing and made to sit on a brown wooden bench a few steps behind him that overlooked the scene he now had his back towards. He then added with a slight sarcastic bite to his words, "I'm sure that I'm as explorative as any other teenager around my age, but I'm nowhere near ever wanting to do anything crazy now or anywhere in the near future."

"Oh, you're not a lot of fun to joke around with when you're acting all pouty, you know? Can't you tell that I was just trying to make a friendly joke with you and put a smile on your face? I don't think I've ever seen one since you were first told of the move. Don't you know that it's a bit unhealthy to be feeling unhappy with a frown on your face for almost the entire day over an extended period of time?"

"I'm sorry for having to feel so somber as of late and to ruin your good mood, but I'm sure you'll agree with me that all of these events happening so quickly right after the other would even make the most emotionally hardened person feel somewhat depressed. You'd have to be a darn robot to not even feel a bit sad about everything that's happened, and I have yet to have met anybody capable of pulling something like that off."

"I'm truly sorry that you feel that way son," a familiar voice from somewhere behind Shadow apologized with a small clearing of his throat. The teen turned his head around in a silent way of greeting the owner of the voice he knew all too well, his father. "Had I more time to try and salvage what was left of both my business and my money, I would have given you just as much time to adequately tie up whatever loose ends you had. And although it might not be how you wished it to be, you can always write to them about what happened once we've settled down in the new grand house I bought us in Mobius."

"It's not the same as physically being there and telling them what was happening," the teen hedgehog responded with a small sigh leaving his mouth while keeping the disgust he had for the other's immense care for money in check as Dr. Robotnik took a seat on the empty space left on the bench next to him. "It almost feels like I purposely abandoned them without any warning or reason as to why. I know you know how I feel about abandoning things and having stuff left unfinished for no good reason. It doesn't leave a good feeling in me, especially when it has to concern my friends."

"Isn't your wellbeing and safety concern enough for you to 'abandon' your friends as you so called it?" the portly man questioned softly in a tone that was clearly meant as a comforting gesture to his son. "In times when money is in both high demand and short supply, people commit to a myriad of crazy things in order to have some. This, unfortunately, tends to include those participating in prostitution rings or even becoming murderers-for-hire. I don't know about you, but I don't care to live in a city that's now on the verge of collapsing both morally and financially."

"I appreciate your concern father, but I can take care of myself in the streets just fine. You do remember that I took some self-defense training back at the boarding school you sent me to despite your ever tenacious protests, do you? I could easily take on anyone who dared to take advantage of me or hold me up at knifepoint."

"And what if the unfortunate were to happen and your attacker has a gun to your head instead of the blunt end of a steak knife to your neck? I doubt that all of your teachings from your self-defense classes would be able to help you survive against the frightening speed of a bullet. You'd be dead on the floor before you even have the chance to turn around and lay eyes on your assailant."

"If they had a gun, then I'd think that they'd shoot me from a far distance rather than walk up to me just to put the thing against my head. It'd serve as a less risky mode of attack for the attacker and insures a cleaner death in that they wouldn't easily be caught. Only a dummy would want to kill someone somewhere where they could easily be out in the open and identified by any passersby."

"That's even more reason why you should leave Robotropolis behind with me and Rouge. You definitely won't be able to stand up against a sniper firing at you from an unknown location. That and your killer wouldn't be brought to justice because nobody would know who he or she is. If you were to have stayed behind and died, I don't think that I'd be able to get my business back up and running. I'm not getting any younger, and I'll need your help soon to run the stock business in Mobius."

"...So you only thought of bringing me along with you so you can have a better chance at solidifying your future in Mobius financially?" Shadow asked in a tone that could easily have been construed as being cautious when it was actually concealing the anger vigorously boiling away deep inside the pit of his stomach. "You only see me as a valuable asset to your work rather than your only son, do you?"

"Now you know that that's not true Shadow!" Dr. Robotnik exclaimed pointedly, being careful as to not let his voice rise any higher than it had been for the entire conversation. Rouge, feeling that this was not her place to speak, simply directed her attention on the horizon and at the barely visible silhouette of the city they had just left. "It's because I love you that I made the hard decision of moving out of our home to a land unfamiliar to you. I would rather start a new life in a new land than to live on in a familiar town without you."

"Oh, stop with the fake caring scene befitting for a soap opera," the black hedgehog responded as he abruptly got up from the bench and started to move towards a set of double doors that would lead him to the inside of the Titanic. He did not try to hide the anger that he had been feeling for the past few minutes and let it show through his words and his feet that stomped across the deck. "You never really cared for me as a son before the economic crisis came around. I doubt that that would've been enough of a shock to make you change your 'loving' feelings about me."

"Shadow, come back here!" the doctor called out to the quickly retreating form of his son to no avail. All he received as an answer was the sight of a door opening and his son retreating into it before being shut closed with a very audible slam. "Oh, I honestly don't know what I'm going to do with the boy at this point," the man added with a frustrated sigh as he rubbed at his balding head. "I understand that I'm not the best at showing my feelings to him as a father, but he should surely know that I wouldn't have done this if I truly didn't love him. He could at least try to grow accustomed to this for the sake of the company he's going to be inheriting from me sometime after we manage to settle in at Mobius."

"He's only seventeen doctor," Rouge simply commented as if that were the very answer to the problem while never tearing her gaze at the horizon beginning to glow with a bright orange flame. The evening hours were quickly approaching them, and that meant that they would have to go back inside soon and enjoy their first meal aboard the ship. "This is a time when most boys his age would naturally feel confused over a few choice things. If you put that on top of everything that's happened, he has a lot of frustration pent up inside him that has had no time to be directed anywhere. You were most likely the unfortunate recipient of his rant of confusion just now."

"You feel that it's his hormones that are to blame, huh? I suppose that's a suitable thought, although I hardly find that to be the case. He's most likely angry at the fact that he didn't have a chance to say a proper goodbye to all his friends. I just hope he knows that it really isn't a permanent goodbye, especially when he could simply just write back to them once we settle down in Mobius."

"It isn't the same thing to him," the bat responded with a small shrug of her shoulders as she finally tore her gaze from the horizon and went to sit next to the doctor. "Teenagers tend to like to do things like saying goodbye physically rather than having to write it out in a letter and force it to be a delayed reaction of sorts. I remember the same thing happening to me when I was his age, and I was just as stubborn as he was when I was told by my parents that we had to move to Robotropolis. It took me a good while to settle in, but I managed to get back to my normal self once I made some new friends. I'm sure that that's what he needs right now, some new friends to help him feel at home quicker."

"Are you sure that that's a good way to help him accept the move?" the portly man questioned skeptically as he raised an eyebrow and idly scratched at his moustache in a thoughtful manner. "Although it might help somewhat, I doubt it'll help fix the more prominent matter at hand. You heard what he said about him feeling like I care more about my business and money than I do for him."

"I'm afraid that's going to have to be something he and you would have to work out," she stated politely as she tried to make clear that she did not want to get into problems that involved immediate family. "I don't feel that it's my place to speak of the things that happen between you and him. I'll try to talk to him tonight, though, about trying to give your actions some more consideration than he's been showing. Knowing how stubborn he can get when he's like this, I doubt it'll do much good."

"Regardless, I do appreciate you helping me out with this. I feel that you're the only one on this ship who can get through to him and help him out with whatever it is that's bothering him. I don't think it matters much to him whether or not I'm his father; he seems too angry to listen to reason with me."

"I believe that it's a far stretch to say that I'll be able to have him open up to me. Don't forget that he also wasn't so keen on the idea of becoming my fiancé when we introduced it to him a month ago. That and we only know each other by name only before the engagement plans took place."

"Still, he'd have to start opening up to you sooner or later if he wants to be able to take over my business. At the age he's in right now, I don't feel comfortable leaving him with everything on his own if I were to pass away now. I know that you have great business skills and know how to make successful deals, so I need him to start opening up to you and trusting you with some of the problems that he's facing. What better time to make that happen than right now on this cruise?"

"Oh, I already tried my hand at making a little joke with him about having some fun with him tonight in bed. He was too bitter to even tell that I was simply just joking with him and not being anywhere near serious. If I couldn't make an innocent joke without having it backlash on me, I don't think that I'll be able to earn his trust within a month's worth of time that we'll be spending on this ship."

Unbeknownst to the two, they were being watched and listened on by someone nearby. He was standing just behind the door leading to the interior of the Titanic with it slightly ajar and looking at them with eyes that reflected anger. This person was none other than the doctor's son and Rouge's fiancé, Shadow.

_All father cares about is me taking the over the reins of his business once we've settled down in Mobius,_ the ebon hedgehog thought nastily as he had an angry scowl plastered on his face that caused those around him to keep a small distance away from him. _Not once during his conversation with Rouge after I left did he say anything caring about me without tagging me on to his business. I swear, he's only taking care of me so he can marry me off to that woman and insure his financial stability even if the stock business falls apart in Mobius. She has more than enough money along with a business still staying afloat for him to fall upon as a backup plan, for crying out loud._

Without watching the two continue to discuss whatever it is they were discussing, he made his way down the hallway towards the main foyer. Once there, he was greeted by the grand staircase that stretched both upwards towards the highest section of the ship and down to the belly. The area was beauty personified due to the immaculate design created by wood carvings, the bright and elaborate paintings of people and landscapes, and a colorful stained glass window mounted on the ceiling that bathed the room in a glorious myriad of colors when the sun shown directly through it. Were he not in such a sour mood right now, he might have noticed all this and appreciated the beauty of the room he was in now. Instead, he continued towards another set of double doors on the left that he knew led to the first class rooms where he, Dr. Robotnik, and Rouge were staying.

_Both Rouge and father probably think that I don't know what it is that they have planned for me,_ he continued on with his thoughtful rant as he opened the double doors painted white with a beautiful green vine motif all over the front and walked down the hall. Those that were inside and walking towards the ship's main foyer felt the negative aura radiating off of him and tried to steer clear from him for fear of being the unfortunate recipient of a verbal lashing. _He wants me to marry her because she still has a successful business under her name along with a wealth that can allow him to keep his social title as a first classman. She wants to marry me because she claims that she loves me, something I'm sure is a fact for her if the flirtatious things she tries to whisper to me isn't any indication of it. She just can't seem to take the hint that I don't love her like she loves me. That and I'm quite disturbed by the thirteen year age difference between the both of us._

_The both of them only have themselves in their minds when it comes to me,_ he continued angrily as his blood began to boil and his hands balled into fists. Even his footsteps began to gain a slight stomp to them and his nostrils flared slightly. _They have little to no consideration as to what I feel or want on any of this. They all want me around just so they can satisfy their own selfish desires. It's almost as if I'm only a tool meant to be used to their satisfaction until they get what they want and throwing me away. I may be seventeen to their eyes, but I can clearly see right through every single plan and lie they throw at me. Oh, it's times like these that I wished I was never my father's son._

Once Shadow turned a corner, he calmed down somewhat as he quickly approached the room he and his father were sharing. Instead of making a beeline to the only sanctuary he knew of on the entire ship, he stopped momentarily in his tracks as he noticed someone standing right in front of the door and knocking against it with his fist. Quickly losing his steaming demeanor and raising a questioning eyebrow, he slowly approached the visitor in front of his door in a friendly manner.

"Can I help you sir?" he asked the person, a dark furred hedgehog like himself except with blackish purple fur and purplish blue highlights, in a friendly manner that was the total opposite of his enraged behavior from moments earlier. "Are you looking for somebody around here?"

"Ah, as a matter of fact, I am," the hedgehog answered in a deep tone as he turned his gaze on the teen, showing him his green eyes that looked completely unnatural on the red color surrounding it. To be quite honest, it freaked him out a bit to see such strange eyes along with a rather ragged look about him from his ruffled fur that made it looked like he was on hard times. "I'm looking for the resident of this room. Do you know where I can find him?"

"Well, you're looking at one of them right now. My name's Shadow," the teen introduced himself as he politely stuck his hand out in an attempt to shake hands with the other. "Might I ask who you are?"

"I'm afraid you're someone I don't feel the need to introduce myself to," the other responded, looking at the gloved hand as if it were something unsightly and unacceptable. "But since you're also a resident of this cabin, then perhaps you can help me by telling me where I can find Dr. Robotnik. I have something that I wish to discuss with him, and he asked for me to meet with him aboard this annoyingly grand ship."

"Uh, if you're looking for my father, then he should still be on the deck talking with my fiancée," the teen answered, taken aback at the bluntness of the other in combination with his apparent bitterness of being aboard the Titanic. "He's just down this hall and towards the back end of the ship."

"Thank you boy," the other thanked half-heartedly as he walked passed him without so much as a second glance. "Perhaps I'll tell you of my name should we chance to see each other again during our entrapment out here in the sea."

_Okay...,_ Shadow thought as he stared at the retreating form of the mysterious man with a raised eyebrow and a cocked head at the very mysterious and somewhat freaky comment. _That was definitely one of the strangest things I've ever seen and heard in my entire life. Even the current situation concerning my father and Rouge couldn't possibly compare with this. I wonder what kind of business he has with my father. I suppose I could always ask him when he comes in tonight, provided that he doesn't want to keep it from me._

With that thought in his head, he tore his eyes away from the hallway that the man had now officially disappeared through after turning the corner. He turned the knob and pushed the door open without so much as a creak on its hinges and went inside.

After he had closed the door behind him, he took note that the room was lavishly decorated and was definitely a place fitting for those who were first classmen. It had reddish brown carpeting stretching across the entire room filled with a lush couch and a pretty table with red cushioned chairs around it. It also held standing lamps and a couple of drawers with paper and ink on top of one of them. The carpeting ended at the start of another open doorway that led to the bathroom as indicated by the shower curtain easily visible, yet it continued to stretch on to another open room that was the bedroom.

_I think I need to relax a bit,_ Shadow thought as he walked into the bedroom, seeing that there were two beds along with a bedside dresser drawer next to each. On top of them were suitcases that belonged to both Dr. Robotnik and Shadow. Thankfully, each of them had their owner's name engraved on it, so there was no confusion as to who owned what. _Boy, father sure brought his entire life with him. You'd think that he'd only need one suitcase or two to hold all of his clothes. No, he just had to go ahead and use six suitcases to pack up everything that had a lot of value to him, most likely all of them being monetarily valuable. Why couldn't he have been just like me and only use two suitcases for clothes and priceless valuables?_

With a shake of his head, the black hedgehog went towards the bed that was situated against the corner of the room and moved the suitcases onto the floor. With that done, he took a seat on the blue and white bed covers and took off his red and white sneakers. After he shoved them off to the side with his now bare feet, he stole a glance at the small black digital alarm clock set on top of his dresser drawer.

_Oh, it's only another hour until dinner service begins,_ he groaned as he laid on top of the comfortable mattress after noting that it was now half past five. _Hopefully, I can get myself to unwind a bit before then. It's just so hard to do that when I hear now father cares more for himself than he does for me._

After letting an aggravated sigh escape his lips, he turned over on his side with his face looking at the wall and closed his eyes, wanting to relax and sort out the many things that were plaguing away at his brain and trying to figure out just how many things have gone wrong with his life. He soon felt his mind wander off and he was sound asleep with only the subtle sounds of his light even breathing heard through the room.


	5. Familiar Faces in Unexpected Places

Hello everybody. For those of you wondering why I'm alternating the characters every chapter, its because I want to. That and I want to make sure that the main characters get their chance to grow onto you and build up to what they're supposed to be. Don't worry, they'll all meet each other at some point; it's just that that point will be in a little while.

Anyway, I hope that you like this chapter. The chapter is exactly just as the title says. The characters in this chapter will meet someone that they never thought they'd see aboard the ship with them being that they all but rushed on board without so much as a second thought. Hope you end up liking how I make out the reunion with them.

And just as a little side note, I'm thinking of probably adding up another genre to this story. However, I'm not quite sure on it yet as I haven't even gotten all the main characters to meet each other for the first time. Isn't it amazing you you all know they're going to meet at some point and just waiting for that moment but keep being denied by all this back story stuff?

Don't forget to leave a review, preferably a constructive criticism if you can come up with one. They help me figure out what to write next. No flames or creative constructive criticisms that are really just flames in nature. If you're going to fave my story, please also leave a review. Your insights and comments are very much appreciated. Until the next update everybody!

* * *

**Chapter 5: Familiar Faces in Unexpected Places**

"Gee, I wonder where we have to go just to get some grub around here," Sonic wondered out loud with a small lick of his lips as he laid on his stomach on a bed inside the cabin he and Knuckles were sharing during their trip across the sea to Mobius. "My stomach's starting to really kill itself here because of its emptiness. I don't think I've had anything to eat today since breakfast, and that was only a small one inch piece of salt pork and a stale biscuit that we had left in our food stash."

Their living quarters was somewhat small due to the fact that they boarded as a couple of third class members, but it was big enough to serve the purpose of sleeping and privacy for the next month's voyage at sea. The ivory white room was fitted with a bunk bed bolted against the left wall with the top having barely even three feet of room before hitting the ceiling. The right side of the room held a large dresser with a television mounted on top of it right next to the only window viewing the outside. Apparently, the ship was lucky enough to have an antenna that allowed them to have some form of entertainment besides touring the ship itself. There was a brown wooden door next to the exit that concealed a small closet and a mirror on the backside of it, while another door led to a bathroom so small that it barely managed to house a sink, toilet, and shower. Thankfully, it was cleaner than what they had to face during their time back at Robotropolis, so they both were not really complaining about a little bit of cramped space. Overall, it was not exactly what they had expected, but they definitely have seen worse in their lifetime back home.

"Well, it wasn't like they gave us a map or anything like that when we got on this floating hunk of metal," Knuckles responded with a shrug of his shoulders as he was lying on his back on the bottom section of the bunk. "It definitely would've been very helpful if they did, though. I think they probably meant for us to find it ourselves if and when we wanted a bite to eat and not bother giving us one. Then again, we've been in here for a couple of hours and haven't really taken the time to explore this ship well enough. And just to clear things up, I haven't had anything to eat since yesterday. I gave you the last scraps of food that we had left this morning, so I'm worse off than you right now."

"And I appreciate the bold sacrifice you made for me there Knux," the cobalt hedgehog stated in a tone that showed he really was thankful at the kind gesture earlier that morning while sounding slightly sarcastic at the same time. "I always knew that living as a couple of poor orphaned kids out on the streets was going to be tough; I never thought that we'd be forced to live through the worst economic time in Robotropolis history and have a hard time getting some money the legit way. I give thanks every legendary entity that's out there that we managed to get out of there and not live though it very long," he added in an overdramatic fashion with his hands raised and touching the ceiling.

"Hey, we would've been alright with my gambling skills working for us," the red echidna said with a sort of smugness in his voice as he sat up and hung his legs over the side, letting his feet rest softly on the floor while rolling his eyes a bit at the childish display his buddy was showing off. "With more people around here losing money, more are starting to take up gambling as a way to make a quick buck. As terrible as it sounds, that's when we can at least try and find a way to earn just enough for food and stuff. Now that we boarded this ship with tickets, we won't have to worry about paying for our next meal for a good while. That's definitely going to be a godsend for us."

"Speaking of paying for our food, I don't think we ever counted how much money we gathered from Sleet and Dingo. I'm sure we won back all of our lost money and then some more on the last miracle hand I played there."

"I still can't believe that you managed to pull off something as amazing as that while being the worst player there. Anyway, I still have our bags on my bed here. Why don't you hop on down and we'll count them up together. The faster we do this, the faster we can go out and search for a place to get a free bite to eat."

"Now that sounds like a good plan," Sonic replied as he quickly hopped off the side of the top bunk, making sure not to bonk his head on the ceiling in the process. "I can't wait to see how much we got on our names now."

With the hedgehog now sitting on the floor, Knuckles quickly joined him as he took the bags and dumped the contents out. After sorting out the clothing and other random stuff from the money, they began to carefully count their winnings with smiles on their faces as they still could not believe they actually won all that.

Within a couple of minutes, they had several different piles of bills and coins, each of them under their own given value. It was not long after that did they finished counting the great pile of paper and metal in their possession. In addition to the money that they started out with, which was around thirty dollars, they had earned just shy over a hundred dollars. The amount was more than enough to let them eat for a good month or so while having some leftover to buy a few more necessities.

"Well, it may not be anywhere near to bringing us up to the second class level, but this is definitely more than what we're used to living on," the echidna said with a half-smile as he began piling the money back into his bag along with his set of clothing. "What a good way to ring in the start of a new life on Mobius, isn't it?"

"Who cares about that right now?" the hedgehog questioned as his stomach gave off a painfully noticeable growl while stuffing his clothes back into his own bag. "What I need now is some chow in my little tank here before I run out of energy and pass out."

"Fine, I get the message here Sonic. We'll go ahead and start looking for that dining hall around here now. Geez, whether or not we got money on us, it's always food that's on your mind, you know?"

With a playful lash of his tongue, Sonic helped put the money away into Knuckles's bag before picking up both of them and stuffing them into the closet. Once he closed the door, he saw the red echidna already at the exit with the door wide open and staring at the empty hallway in front of him. However, he did not move any farther than that because he had no idea which direction to move in once outside.

Without saying anything, the hedgehog moved right past the other and started down the left portion of the hallway. With a raised eyebrow at this, the echidna quickly closed the door behind them and made sure it was locked. He knew that the other was not sure where he was going, but he always liked to run on instinct when he was not sure of anything, so it was not like this random direction behavior was of any surprise to him.

Once they had turned a corner and reached the end of the hallway, they found themselves in front of a set of stairs that led only upward. Next to it was a sign that indicated it lead to the second class B Deck level of the ship. Towards the left was another hallway with a sign above it showing that it only led to more third class cabins.

"Do you have any idea where you're going Sonic?" Knuckles finally spoke up in a slightly annoyed tone after staying quiet and allowing Sonic to lead him to only god knew where. "I may not know just how this ship is supposed to look, but I don't think this is really the way to wherever it is that we can get some food. Why don't you just find somebody around here and ask them where it is."

"Shut up Knux!" Sonic spat out in a slightly frustrated tone as he scratched at the back of his ear, a habit that he had whenever he was frustrated or nervous. "I'm nowhere anywhere near lost here. I'm just...trying to make sure that I remember my surroundings in case we have to come back through here to get to our room. Things like that might come in handy one of these days, you know?"

"...Of course it would," the echidna responded with strong sarcasm marring his voice accompanied with both a roll of his eyes and an amused smirk. "Why didn't I think of doing that before? How very stupid of me."

Before the already frustrated hedgehog could say anything more to his sarcastic friend, they heard the sound of light footsteps coming towards them from the hallway they had just come from. Being that they were in the third class residential level of the Titanic, they both did not pay any mind to it and continued to stare at each other, no wanting to cause a scene with their impending argument. However, they both snapped out of their staring contest when they heard the approaching person calling them by their names.

"Sonic? Knuckles?" the voice that sounded to have belonged to a young boy inquired with strong shock reverberating through it as the sounds of footsteps stopped at the same time. "Is that really you guys?"

In a simultaneous fashion, both teens turned their attention back to the corner they had come by earlier and looked at who it was that had addressed them with a voice that they both found to be very familiar. Their eyes soon rested on a lone figure that looked no older than twelve staring back at them with eyes as blue as the clear sky wide with surprise. He was a small orange and white furred fox who probably stood just over Sonic's with sneakers of the same make and color as hedgehog's, red with white straps fastened with golden yellow buckles on the outsides of the feet. His hands that were covered with white gloves and held together at the wrists with black wristbands seemed a bit fidgety, and his pointed triangular ears twitched a bit in surprise. A few strands of fur stood on the top of his head and looked like an attempt at a Mohawk with as little fur as possible. The one thing truly stood out about him was that he had not just one, but two tails moving ever so slightly behind him, each of them adorned with white fur from the middle to their tips.

"Oh, my freaking god...!" Knuckles whispered under his breath in surprise as his violet eyes grew bigger with equal emotion. His breath had left his body as a result and he found it hard to swallow the lump of surprise stuck in his throat. This also caused him to temporarily lose his ability to speak.

"Is that you Tails?" Sonic spoke up, breaking the silence that had dominated the three a second time after the echidna was brought at a loss for words. "Please tell me that it's really you and not some ghost looking like you coming to tell us that you died sometime after we took off from Robotropolis Port?"

"Yep, you're Sonic alright," the young fox responded with a small amused shake of his head, his feet still planted right where he was at with eyes never wavering away from the two teens. "Only you could manage to come up with a comment like that that doesn't make any sense at all."

"Damn Tails, I never thought that we'd get the chance to see you again!" the echidna exclaimed happily after he finally managed to swallow that bothersome lump and regain his ability to speak. "I was literally thinking about how we had just left you behind without saying so much as goodbye when we were in our cabin. How the heck did you manage to get yourself on board the Titanic?"

"I could practically ask you both the same question," Tails redirected the question back towards the two in front of him as his feet finally saw fit to work and led him closer to the two. "I never thought that I'd be able to see you two again after I boarded this ship. You won't believe how surprised I was when I thought I heard you guy's arguing with each other out here in the hallway."

"I don't think surprised isn't really the word to describe what I'm feeling right now," Sonic replied with a smile as his stomach growled out in protest, something that happened coincidentally after he made that comment. He then added in a very defensive tone, "And that's not what I'm talking about!"

"Let me guess, you two are out here looking for a place to get something to eat, right?" the young fox questioned with a small snicker escaping from the back of his throat. "Oh, aren't I glad that some things never change? Come on you two, I was about to make my way to the third class dining area for a bite to eat myself. If I didn't know any better, you're both probably lost and have no idea where it's at."

"Eh, I guess you could say that," the hedgehog answered with a sheepish chuckle leaving his lips as he scratched the back of his ear nervously. "How about we use this time to catch up with each other over some nice dinner? We haven't really had a chance to talk with each other for a few months now."

"Go ahead and lead the way little guy," the echidna responded as he watched the fox lead them towards the dining area. The two quickly followed closely behind him, both still pleasantly surprised at being able to see a familiar face aboard the Titanic and looking at each other with a pleasantly amused smile.

Within a few minutes, the three managed to make it to the dining area that was partially crowded due to the fact that it was probably dinnertime. Another couple minutes later, they all had a tray of food in their hands and looking for a nice unoccupied table to sit at. Once they found a suitable table, they sat around it and began to eat while catching up and answering each other's' questions.

"So how exactly did you two managed to get yourselves the tickets to get aboard this ship?" Tails asked as he lifted his spoon out of a steaming bowl of hot chicken soup and blew at it before putting it into his mouth. He then added after chewing and swallowing a bit, "The last time I saw you two, you both weren't really in the best of situations in terms of money, and even the third class tickets cost an arm and a leg to get."

"Well, I suppose you could say that we both managed to get a real lucky break with that," Sonic answered as he picked up one of the few chili dogs that were topped with the works and sitting on his tray and began digging into it. With his mouth full and miraculously managing to not spray food anywhere, he added, "Would you believe it if I told you that _I_ managed to win us the boarding tickets in a game of poker in a pub that was on the harbor?"

"_You_ won two tickets by playing and winning a poker game?" the two-tailed fox exclaimed as he raised his eyebrows in both amusement and surprise. "I thought you didn't know how to play poker."

"That's because he didn't at the time," Knuckles clarified as he took a bite of the cheeseburger in his hands and chewed at it for a good while before swallowing. "A couple of guys at the bar called Sleet and Dingo came up and challenged us to a game of tag-team poker, and Sonic was the only one I trusted enough in the whole place to have as a partner. I had to speed-teach him everything about the game so that he wouldn't get himself killed in the poker war and lose all his money in the process."

"And that makes it even harder to believe that he managed to pull off a win, especially on a game that had tickets in the bet. I might just be a preteen fox, but even I know the basics of poker and could probably hold my own in one game. And just how did you manage to pull that one off on your first game anyway?"

"I guess you could just call it a stroke of luck," the hedgehog responded with a cocky smile on his lips as he finished his first chili dog and quickly went to work on the other. "I had a good hunch that the last hand was going to be good for me, and I just went along with my gut feeling."

"Yeah, and he almost gave me a heart attack with that stupid gut move of his," the echidna said with a small groan as he remembered the feeling of being sick during the game. "You won't believe what he had in his hand when he decided to go along with Sleet's bluff at the time. He had nothing but unreliable junk while the other had a pair of aces on him."

"And I'm guessing that this Sleet character felt cocky with his hand and kept trying to rob you both of your money. That still doesn't really explain to me how you both took the tickets away from him. I don't think that anybody would be that cocky as to put ship tickets up for bet."

"Well, he happened to have a dumb-dumb for a poker partner who somehow managed to actually play a good poker game. When Knux went all-in, he also decided to put in the gold watch he got from his father as a way to get more money. I'm guessing that was when he thought he got a good hand."

"Hey, getting a straight in the game is a pretty good hand to play with. I didn't think that Dingo would've been so simple-minded and thought it would be fair if he put something of value other than money into the pot, too. But boy, the look on Sleet's face when he did that was beyond priceless."

"And then it ended up that you had the lowest hand out of all of us on the table while I had the biggest. Oh, the look of utter shock and surprise from both of those bozos is definitely something that I won't be forgetting anytime soon when I showed off my straight flush that totally decimated his four aces."

"A straight flush, huh?" Tails responded with eyes raised minutely in surprise as he finished the last of his soup he had been eating while listening to his friends' poker adventures. He then picked up a ham and lettuce sandwich topped with tomatoes next to the bowl while saying, "I never thought that Sonic would be able to get such great beginner's luck on a game of chance and luck. Then again, when he has a gut feeling about something and goes along with it, the chances of him being right about it is pretty high. I honestly have no idea where he gets that kind of intuition and luck."

"Uh, you do know that I'm still sitting here, do you Tails?" Sonic asked as he swallowed down the rest of his second chili dog and went to work on his third. "Don't talk about me as if I weren't even here. It's really annoying. And why are you going around bashing at my great hunches and skills at luck? I can't help it if I'm probably one of the luckiest guys in the world who's very in tune with himself."

"Don't you actually mean that you're a guy who's full of yourself and who tries to look for excuses out of everything inside his dark little heart?" Knuckles rephrased teasingly as he finished off the last of his burger and chewed away at it while picking away at the golden French fries left on the plate. "For as long as I've known you, which has been since the time my father introduced me to your uncle, you've always had a way to worm your way out of trouble. And those gut feelings of yours are just a side effect of always getting yourself into trouble and just going with the first thing you think of in order to try and get out of it."

"Well, you can't deny that it's been working pretty well for us these past couple years of living out on the streets," the cobalt hedgehog responded in a muffled voice since his mouth was full of hot dog and condiments. When he swallowed the mass of food, he stated, "Name one other person that you know who happens to have the kind of luck and instinct that I have, regardless if they got into trouble every now and then. I bet that you wouldn't be able to do that if your life depended on it."

"I'm not going to engage in another bet with you for as long as I live," the red echidna responded as he stuffed some fries into his mouth while some of his fur stood on end a bit. "Having a near heart attack experience with you as my partner in just a poker game is more than enough for me. Honestly, you should've seen the stress this guy was putting me under during the entire game."

"Anyway, I think that's enough of just us two talking about ourselves here. How about we hear some things about you and the life you lived without us for a while, little buddy? We haven't really seen each other for a few months now, so how about you tell us a bit about what you've been up to lately?"

"Well, I've been working on a few of my inventions and hoped to get them recognized as things that would work for everyday living," the young kitsune explained after swallowing the bite of sandwich that was in his mouth and explaining about his life's passion. "Some of them ended up going to the scrap heap, but others held some potential in them. After tinkering around with those I thought would work, I managed to create a machine that could control almost every electronic in a house with a portable remote. It was the only thing I could make on such a small scale with what little materials that I had on me, but I managed to get the thing in so-so working condition."

"Wow, that sounds like a pretty sweet piece of technology you made there," Sonic said with a low whistle as he took a forth dog into his hands. "Then again, only you could manage to create something cool with only a few pieces of junk and some working tools. Did you manage to get your invention through with whoever it is that takes care of all this technical inventions and stuff?"

"I actually got a lucky break on that, you know? Before Robotropolis began its crazy downward spiral in economics, I went to this patent company and introduced my prototype to them. Long story short, they went head over heels on the idea and gave me a contract to sign. Apparently, they were so excited about the machine that they happily looked over the fact I was eleven at the time. I had to wait a couple weeks before I would be set for life, but I was clearly on the road to that."

"If you had it all made, then why are you now on this ship thanks to the help of a third class ticket?" Knuckles asked with raised eyebrows as he continued to stuff more fries into his mouth. "The last I checked, the economic downfall came around almost two months ago. You should be living the life of luxury right about now with us at your side and all that. I mean, you would have tried to find us and ask us to live with you, would you?"

"Of course I would. I would never leave two of my best friends out on the streets to fend for themselves, even though they already know how to do just that. It just wouldn't feel right to me if I did that."

"Then what exactly happened that didn't allow you to find us?" the azure hedgehog questioned as he finished half of the food in his hands in two humongous bites. He then added with his mouth completely full and barely audible voice, "The cohrac din't go hrugh o somin ligh that?"

"I can't believe that I managed to understand you, but that didn't exactly happen. You see, somebody saw it fit to go about spreading these stupid rumors that I managed to steal the blueprints for the prototype out of his lab. With that said, the authorities found it fit to believe his word over mines simply because he's a full grown adult and I'm just a little kid who should theoretically not know what I'm talking about. I tried to talk to the guys at the prototype company, but they just refused to listen to reason. They even tried to put me under arrest for theft right then and there. I still don't know how I managed to get myself out of that building and away from them all."

"Wait a minute, you were what?" Sonic shouted out, nearly choking on the lump of food that had just went down his throat and came back halfway up due to his sudden outburst. Now in a coughing fit, he took the cup of water he brought along with his dinner and downed the whole thing in just one go.

"What do you mean you were about to be arrested?" Knuckles continued on with the question, although he did so a bit calmer and quieter than the other teen tried to do. "Are you actually telling us that they didn't want to accept that the idea was yours just because of some punk wanting to ruin your life?"

"That's pretty much the gist of it. Because of that, I was forced to go into hiding. And before either of you say anything about me trying to find you and seek protection behind you, I was practically a wanted fox from the moment I left the patent office. I couldn't risk being seen wandering in the open, especially when there were a lot of people looking for me."

"Then how the heck did you manage to survive without getting yourself caught for the next two months?" the hedgehog asked after he got his throat unclogged and took a deep breath. "You had to have found some way to get your food and stuff to have survived that long."

"Well, it wasn't my number one choice, but I went to a group of people's house in hopes that they would believe what I told them and not rat me out. I'm telling you, I think I managed to inherit some of Sonic's luck for a moment there because I managed to score a temporary hideout from the public eye. The group I crashed with called themselves The Chaotix Detective Agency. Not only did they believe my story; they even went so far as to try and grab some information to try and clear my name. As a way to compensate them and to fully cement my story, they asked me to build them something that could help with their detective work.

"Needless to say, I managed to make them a fully working device that doubles up as both a record keeper and profile scanner," the kitsune continued on after taking a small break to finish up the rest of his sandwich. "With my new creation under their belts, they then considered my payment to them in full along with the acquisition of their trust. Unfortunately, the search for me was starting to get even more rigorous, and they couldn't afford to keep me around with them since the police now resorted to forced searches of houses."

"That still doesn't quite explain how you got yourself on this ship. However, I think I can take a guess as to who helped you get on."

"There's nobody around here who could've helped me out with this Sonic. Being that I showed them my trust with my creation along with fixing up a few things around their place, they wanted to help me out to buy some more time with the investigation. However, they were a detective agency that worked outside of the Robotropolis Police Force, so staying with them during forced house searches was out of the question. So they did the next best thing, they got me a disguise along with a third class ticket that they managed to buy at a discount so that I could hide out on Mobius before the problem here caught up with me. I would suspect then that you know the rest of the story from here."

"Well, talk about getting the luckiest break of your life there," Knuckles responded as he finished the last of the fries on his plate and drank a bit of his soda. "You meet a group of detectives that were inclined to believe you and your story, provided that you made something that would work for them, while they hid you at their place and helped to clear your name. And as if to go the extra mile to help make sure you weren't put in jail, they buy you a third class ticket so you could hide out on Mobius until the dust settles. I think you're right when you said some of Sonic's luck rubbed off on you."

"Are you sure these Chaotix guys can be trusted with not telling those stupid cops and patent guys about where you're at right now?" Sonic asked with doubt in his voice as he scarfed down the rest of his fourth hot dog and picked up a fifth and final one on his tray. With his mouth full once again, he said, "I wunin't truf unione ehept my besh friends to keep me sufe an all that."

"Please stop talking with your mouth full," Tails chastised the hedgehog with an annoyed shake of his head, wondering in the back of his mind how he always managed to figure out what the other said whenever he did this. "Not only is it disgusting, but it's hard to understand what you're saying. I've probably been hanging around with you too much if I can actually understand every word you said. And just how many of those chili dogs can you wolf down in one sitting? God, I think you're on your fifth one right now.

"Anyway, I have my complete trust in those three in that they will try their best to keep my location hidden for as long as possible from the patent company and the Robotropolis Police," the little fox continued as he moved the discussion away from Sonic's amazing and borderline atrocious eating habits and the bottomless pit he liked to call his stomach. "They also said that they were going to continue with the investigation and try to find those who tried to ruin my name. They found a couple of leads while I was there, but none of them seemed to make any kind of connection."

"Well, the important thing right now is that you're safe and with us now," the red echidna responded with a warm smile as he scooted over next to the young fox and placed a comforting arm over his shoulder. The little fox smiled at this friendly gesture. "As long as we're together on this ship, Sonic and I will take care of you and make sure that nothing bad happens. You can be sure that we'll keep our word on that. After all, you're practically like our little brother we never knew we had before."

"You said it Knux," the cobalt hedgehog agreed happily as he scarfed down the final bits of his final dog as if it were only his first one of the meal. "We know you better than anybody else on this planet, and we know that you're a genius with machinery who would never steal ideas from other people just to make them out as your own. The only thing I wish I could do is figure out who that damn guy was that actually had the balls to say you 'stole' an idea from his lab at some point."

"Well, there's nothing that you or anybody else on this ship can really do about this now even if you wanted to. We're all on our way to Mobius right now, and it's pretty much a one-way ticket with no way back unless you buy another expensive ticket for the trip back. However, I'm guessing you guys didn't bother to read that little detail on the tickets when you won them," he added as he saw the two older teens' shocked reactions at this revelation.

"You're saying that we can't go back to Robotropolis?" Knuckles asked, although his tone sounded more questioning than surprised as his face was showing. He then added in a nonchalant fashion that was not in his regularly sarcastic or tough-guy attitude, "Oh well, it wasn't as if I wanted to continue to live in that dump of a city anyway."

"Wow, I didn't think that you'd take this so well," the cobalt hedgehog responded with raised eyebrows, figuring that his red furred buddy would have acted more surprised than he was now being that he had lived there all his life as opposed to himself who was only raised there since he was young. "I thought you said a few years ago that you would never think about moving to another place outside of Robotropolis and call it home."

"Hey, that was before the economy took the biggest nosedive it's taken in history and forced every high official to want to arrest a poor defenseless twelve-year-old fox," the echidna said as he rubbed the fox's head in a brotherly way and causing said animal to squirm a bit at the movement. "The people there should be embracing the fact that they have a self-made genius amongst them, not making some stupid lies and condemning him from society with a brand as a liar and stealer of ideas. I don't care if I lived in a city known for its mechanical prowess; I'm not going to be calling that place home anymore because of that."

"Well, what do you know? Not only can you be stubborn to a point, but you also can be quite impassioned when it comes to us. I should've known long ago that you were really just a big old softie in on the inside."

"Don't press your luck with those comments hedgehog. This 'softie' can easily knock you out and throw you across the world and back again. You'd be way past over a hundred after you wake up from the coma I'll give you."

"And I love you, too, tough guy," Sonic answered with a smile and a friendly roll of his eyes while Tails simply laughed at the two teens' antics. He then added, "By the way, did those Chaotix guys ever say something about the things they managed to scrap together before you left?"

"Well, they did give me a note with the clues they managed to scavenge; but as I said earlier, it wasn't anywhere near enough to put together into a workable piece of information," the kitsune said with a shake of his head before getting up from his seat and stretching a bit. "To be perfectly honest with you, I don't really want to talk about it right now. I'm kind of a bit tired with all this catching up and explaining. Maybe I'll bring it up again sometime tomorrow when we meet up again?"

"Tomorrow?" the hedgehog asked in a sort of dumb fashion, watching as a waiter came by and picked up all of their empty and dirty dishes from the table and taking it with him to the kitchen for cleaning.

"Of course tomorrow. Please tell me that you and Knuckles will still be on board when I wake up tomorrow morning. It'd be pretty stupid to jump overboard or take a lifeboat for no good reason, especially since you're not really too keen on the thought of being so close to water. I still can't believe that you managed to get yourself to be on this ship with water virtually all around you."

"Trust me; I wasn't thinking of that when I was running to catch this ship. All I was thinking about was the chance to be able to go back to the place where I was born."

"Whatever you say. I'm going to go and be in my room for the rest of the night. I've got some things that I brought with me and want to finish working on. You guys are welcome to come visit me whenever you want, except in the middle of the night for no good reason. I know you guys sometimes like to stay up late at night and all that."

"Hey, we changed a bit since we last met," Knuckles called out to the now retreating form of the fox making his way back to his cabin. "We don't stay up that late anymore. Staying up late out in the streets isn't exactly the smartest thing to do when a city is on the verge of an economic meltdown."

"That's what you said the time before the last time we met," Tails countered before leaving the dining area and back to the third class cabin hallways. "Just don't go bothering me on odd hours of the night."

"I still can't believe that we managed to run into Tails on this ship, of all places," Sonic replied with a sigh as he walked slowly out of the same exit the kitsune went with Knuckles right beside him. "Who would've thought that we'd be this lucky to see him again?"

"Yeah, I only wish the little guy weren't in so much trouble that other people have caused for him," the echidna responded with a disapproving shake of his head as he recalled the story the fox had told them. "He deserves better than that, and it just bugs me that I wasn't there to help him when he really needed it."

"Hey, you can't change what's already happened Knux," the cobalt hedgehog said with a shrug of his shoulders as they began to make their way down the hallway that would lead them to their cabin. "How about we abandon all this thinking for tonight and call it a night like Tails is? All this catching up has made my brain tired."

"Only you would get tired just by thinking. Oh well, I guess I'm one to talk to since I'm tired myself. It's too dark to really do much of anything right now, so I guess I'll just follow your lead here."

With that said, the two teens finally made it to their cabin. Knuckles dug the key out of his gloves and opened the lock on the doorknob. Once they had both went inside, the hedgehog closed the door and they both decided to stay inside for the rest of the night. Taking note of the small mounted on the wall, they took note that it was only seven. Being that they did not want to go back outside, they passed the time by playing a friendly game of poker against each other with the money they won so they could decide who would get how much from the winnings. And this is what they kept doing for the rest of the night until they had to go to sleep for the first time on the grand passenger ship Titanic.

* * *

Well, here's the new chapter that happens to be one of the longest I've ever written in the longest of times. Hope you like this unexpected reunion Sonic and Knuckles had just experienced after going on board on a whim. And for those of you who don't know how to understand "talking with stuffed mouth" language, here's the translation.

"The contract didn't go through or something like that?"

"I wouldn't trust anyone except my best friends to keep me safe and all that."

They are all translated in the order they first appeared and all. Hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Until the next update everybody!


	6. The Dwindling Remnants of Broken Freedom

Hello everybody! Here's a new chapter to the ever growing complexity that is turning out to become this intriguing story. Believe it or not, I actually came up with another idea after scanning through some peoples fan art and regular art of the characters. However, if that ever takes off from the drawing board, then it'll be a long time into the story, so long that it'll probably be forgotten by us all when it comes to introduce it.

And speaking of fan art, if there is anybody reading this who would like to draw fan art for some of my characters, I would be more than happy to let you do so. Of course, I would do it myself, but I'm a good writer with art skills befitting of a kindergartner. So if anybody wants to do fan art of my story and characters, feel free to do so _after _telling me that you're going to do it.

Anyway, that's enough about art and all that other stuff. I hope that you'll all enjoy this chapter. And to the reviewer who says Shadow has a hard time dealing with people, are you sure that's the case? It's a good foreshadow, but that's not what I was trying to set up. He's not really meant to be like how he is in the games, all antisocial and all that other wonderful crap. Hopefully, this chapter will be able to show you a bit better why he's acting like this to Rouge and his father, Dr. Robotnik.

Now with all that said, go ahead and enjoy this new chapter. Don't forget to leave a review after you're done reading.

* * *

**Chapter 6: The Dwindling Remnants of Broken Freedom**

"Shadow, it's time to wake up sleepyhead," Shadow heard his name being called in a sweet and feminine voice, the trigger that caused him to wake up ever so slightly from his nice slumber. He refused to open his eyes, however, and opted to just roll over onto his side and have his face looking at the wall and away from the now offending light shining down on him.

"Go away Rouge," the black hedgehog murmured in a barely audible voice at the woman with a yawn obscuring practically everything he said before falling silent once more.

"Don't give me that now," Rouge chastised lightly as she forcibly rolled the poor teen over towards her and forced him up by dumping something cold and wet all over his face. This caused him to become fully awake with at start. She then questioned in a frustrated tone, "Do you have any idea what time it is right now?"

"Might I say that it's right now time to kill you for doing that to me?" the poor teen responded grumpily as he sat up and wiped away whatever liquid that was stuck on his face with his hand. "You could've just kept poking at me instead of watering me down with only one warning, you know?"

"I've been calling out to you for the past five minutes already," the bat explained with a sigh escaping her lips along with an annoyed shake of her head. "I never thought that you would be that heavy of a sleeper to withstand all my calling out right into your ear and constant poking at your side. You almost ended up crushing my hand during that."

"Well, perhaps I should have warned you about my sleeping habit beforehand," he said with a strong sarcastic bite to his words. "Perhaps it would have spared you a possibly sore arm and me a wet face and quills."

"Oh, you're not a good person to talk with right when you wake up, you know? Anyway, I only came here to look for you because me and your father have been waiting to have dinner with you for almost half an hour now. I figured you might have been hiding in here doing something, so I asked your father for the keys to this room, and I soon figured out that my hunch was right."

"It's seven already?"

"Well, there's no other reason why I'd be in here without the accompaniment of your father looking for you if that weren't the case. Now hurry up and get yourself freshened up before we head off for dinner. You've been keeping all of us and our dinner guest waiting this whole time."

"Alright, I'll be ready in a couple of minutes," Shadow responded without much care as he dragged himself into the bathroom that was connected to the bedroom. Not one second after his whole self was inside the bathroom did his head poke out from the doorway with a questioning look on his face. "Wait a minute; did you just say that we have a guest for dinner today?"

"My, you really are a slow man when you just wake up," Rouge replied with a small chuckle coming out from behind her hand that was over her mouth concealing a teasing smile. "Then again, you're really still just a teenager who probably needs some time to get used to these wake-up calls. Remind me to never speak business with you right when you wake up.

"Anyway, this man came up to us just as we went into the dining hall asking to speak with your father," the bat continued on as the ebon and red colored hedgehog disappeared once again into the bathroom with the sound of water running from the faucet echoing out into the bedroom. "He seemed to have known the stranger and invited him to have dinner. In compensation for buying you some time to get there, he talked the poor gentleman to death. He's probably still going on about many things with him right now."

_As if I care whether or not the guy's getting his ear chewed off by father,_ the hedgehog thought to himself as he splashed some cold water onto his face to help himself wake up. He even went so far as to put a few drops of it into his ear so that it would be partially clogged up and thus somewhat drown out the voice of his fiancée. _What I care about right now is for her to leave me along and let me get ready in peace. I still can't believe she didn't get the hint that I didn't want to be disturbed when I purposefully tried to crush her hand under the guise of sleeping. If she really loved me, then she should know when it is that I'm faking sleep and want some space to myself. Hell, all of my male friends know when I just want some alone time, and they don't even have any plans in the near future to be marrying me. Something is definitely wrong with that picture._

After spending a couple of minutes washing up and taking care of his business, he made a half-hearted effort to straighten up his bowtie that had become slightly askew during his slumber before heading out to the still waiting Rouge. She was sitting on the bed still running her mouth off while his ears were still clogged with water. Unfortunately for him, the water started to go deeper into his canal and began irritating him more than providing some comfort from the droning voice.

"Rouge, do you think you can go on ahead and tell father and out unexpected guest that I'm on my way?" he asked her politely in an attempt to get her as far away from him as possible for at least a couple of minutes. "I need to take care of some _personal_ things, if you know what I mean, and I'd rather that you not be here while I do that."

"Oh, I understand completely honey," she responded in an understanding tone and a smile as she got up from her perch on the bed. She then added with a secretive smile that seemed to indicate she knew some deeper meaning in his words, "Just make sure you don't take too long looking good and getting rid of your stress. Your father will be expecting you within a few minutes once I get there and tell him."

"Don't worry; I'll be there," he assured her as she left the bedroom. The sounds of her footsteps quickly faded away into nothingness until the sound of a door opening and closing allowed the entire first class cabin to become silent once more.

_Oh, I never thought she'd leave without me there,_ he thought smugly as he picked away at his ear to get the excess moisture out of his ear. _She's really starting to get on my nerves, and I can't just leave her on the curb lest I want my father to throw me overboard and leave my body for the fishes to eat. Oh well, at least I managed to get her away from me for a little while. I can't believe that she believed me when I said I wanted to relieve some stress. She'll definitely believe almost anything that comes out of my mouth. Besides, I already had my personal relief by sleeping it off before she barged in._

Chuckling a bit at his ability to trick the other into thinking he was doing something personal, he successfully drew out the water in his ear and began to move out of his bedroom. He knew in the back of his mind that he was not really the kind of hedgehog to fool around with himself once every day or something like that; rather, he was probably the only one in his group of trusted friends who only did it only every once in a while. Then again, she did not know about that, so why not just use it to his advantage on this ship whenever he wanted to have some alone time? It was probably the only way he would be rid of her for a little while, at least until they got married. That would be when the entire privacy business would most likely fly out the window along with his last source of solace from the outside world. Oh well, it would be good while it lasts, and he was definitely going to make sure to take advantage of it as much as he possibly could.

_I wonder who this surprise guest is?_ he thought as he finally left the cabin and out into the hallway after he felt Rouge was a good distance ahead of him. _I can take a guess as to who it is, but that sounds more of a long shot than anything. Then again, I learned during my time at boarding school was that anything was possible._

As he continued to mull over his thoughts, he made his way calmly through the hallway towards the dining hall. Despite the fact that he had no idea as to where the place was, he prided himself in his good sense of direction and his ability to find places he had previously not been to before. The only thing he knew about it was that it was somewhere around the ship's main foyer.

After spending a few minutes moving towards the main foyer, he found it more than easy to identify where the dining hall was at. It was well indicated by a set of double doors with see through glass that was tinted with the slightest hints of blue set inside white painted wood. It was just a simple design, but the small sign set above the doorway clearly indicated what the room beyond it was. That and there were also the sights of tables covered in white tablecloth with various silverware on top of them as a telltale sign.

"May I help you sir?" a man who was standing behind a wooden podium by the closed doors asked with a small polite nod of his head.

"I believe that my dinner party is inside the dinner hall right now," Shadow simply answered with an almost expressionless face as he looked down at a book on top of the podium. "Would you mind checking the book for a 'Robotnik'?"

"Please wait a moment while I search the registry," the man replied as he began skimming the books for the various signatures written against the white pages. After a few seconds of tracing the words with his fingers, he appeared to have found what he was looking for and looked up at the ebon hedgehog with a small smile. "Ah yes, a Dr. Ovi Robotnik and a party of two are currently inside. Might I suppose that you're third member that Ms. Rouge mentioned when she came by?"

"If she mentioned the name Shadow, then that's me," he teen responded in a bored tone while subconsciously wondering who the third person accompanying the dinner was inside with his father.

"Then go ahead and walk on in, Mr. Shadow," the man greeted him as he walked over to the door and opened it up for him to walk through. "Your party has been waiting for you for quite a while now."

Without so much as muttering a thank-you, Shadow walked into the dining hall and was suddenly assaulted with the smells of various foods that were wafting out from the kitchen. He could not help but to let a small smile appear on his face as the scent of braised meats and steamed fishes reached his nose. However, he did not have much chance to enjoy the various smells before he felt himself being grabbed by the hand and led towards a table within the other sea of tables.

"It's about time you decided to get here dear," Rouge replied without looking back at him as she led them through the tables and towards the one his father and the other guest was waiting. "I didn't think that it would take you this long to take care of your personal business when I left you. You keep your father waiting any longer and it'll be nothing but bad days for you on this ship, you know?"

"Just take me to our table Rouge," the black hedgehog replied plainly just as soon as his father came into his sights. It was then that he also saw the mysterious dinner guest the bat had told him about earlier and discovered that his hunch was correct.

Sitting on a chair just opposite of the doctor was blackish purple hedgehog that the teen had run into when he first went to his room. He was right now immersed in conversation with his father about something that seemed to be quite laid back and joking due to the fact that both men were right now laughing about something. At the same time, it also looked like they were enjoying themselves over a small plate of appetizers. It was almost as if they did not even notice the couple fast approaching them.

"Hello father," Shadow greeted his father in a neutral tone once he was close enough to hear him. "I'm sorry for being a bit late to dinner today."

"Ah, there you are Shadow," Dr. Robotnik responded jovially as he looked up from his conversation and saw his son about to take a seat right next to Rouge. "I was wondering where you were. I was beginning to worry for your safety there."

"Oh, the poor boy was probably just tired from all the excitement from today and accidentally overslept," Rouge explained to the best of her ability with what little information she had about the hedgehog's thought process. Amazingly enough, she was right on the nose with the explanation she most likely just pulled out from the top of her head. "I told you that I'll be able to find him sleeping in his room."

"So this is your son doctor?" the guest questioned with an unreadable expression on his face. "I believe you now when you said that he's most likely the most handsome man aboard the entire ship."

"Shadow, allow me to introduce to you to him," the portly man said as he motioned to the bat to start ordering the food. "His name is Mephiles."

"It's a pleasure to meet you Mephiles," the teen greeted the man as he never once let his eyes leave the others. As much as he tried to do so, he could not seem to decode anything within them. It was almost as if he were trying to look a mile away through the densest of foggy days.

"The pleasure is all mines Shadow," Mephiles responded in a rather neutral tone that seemed to hide something else in his voice. This was all just speculation on the teen's part, but he could not help but let these suspicious feelings set off internal alarms within him.

Deciding to try out a little test of sorts, he asked, "Have we met somewhere before? I can't help but feel that I've seen you around here before."

"I don't believe so," the other answered coolly as a waiter came by and began taking food orders from Rouge and Dr. Robotnik. "I haven't had the grace to meet you before now, so I would guess you probably saw me wandering around this ship sometime before now. Maybe that's where your sense of familiarity stems from?"

"I suppose that might be the case here," Shadow simply agreed, knowing full well that that was not the real answer or the truth. They had already met in front of his cabin, albeit only briefly. Such a brief moment of contact should not constitute the right to lie about it. Just what was this man planning that he would want to lie about something so miniscule and practically unimportant?

Apparently, the man seemed to have caught on to what he was thinking because an almost unnoticeable change in his eyes took place. Because he had been looking at them the entire time, the teen easily caught this. However, it had quickly disappeared as fast as it had appeared, and he was back to his stoic unreadable self.

"Before I forget, I would like to thank you Mephiles for coming aboard this ship on such short notice," Dr. Robotnik spoke up and thanked the man, snapping Shadow out of his musings. "I'm truly sorry that I didn't give you much time to think about coming. I was afraid that you wouldn't be able to make it when I asked for your presence on this ship last night."

"And why would you worry about me not being able to come to your aid?" Mephiles questioned as he abandoned his gaze on Shadow and placed it back on the doctor. "I am always happy to help you in any way that you would want me to. After all, I was both your secretary and personal bodyguard when you were still running your stock company."

"Yes, I suppose I shouldn't have had anything to worry about there. You always were the most diligent worker under my employment and always eager to help me out with any company problems that come my way. You also served as my personal bodyguard on times when I had to go out on business trips in unfamiliar territories."

"Well, it was but a small token of my gratitude to you allowing me the chance to work within your company about five years ago. You were the last chance I had in getting a job at the time, and I wouldn't let that chance go without a fight."

"Yes, I remember you telling me about your family having a hard time surviving off of your mother's paycheck. With a terminally ill father and a mentally ill brother, you really had to do whatever you could to help your family. That was quite admirable for you to do that. By the by, how is your family?"

"Father is still alive, although my younger brother seems to have taken a turn for the worse. My mother is still working as hard as she can to keep the family going, and I left all of my money that I earned under your employment with her so she can pay the caretaker I managed to hire."

_This is starting to sound like something you'd find out of one of those cheesy soap operas,_ Shadow thought as he covered up a yawn with his hand and allowed himself to zone away from the conversation. Rouge had also started to pester him about something, but he pretended to be interested in the conversation unfolding in front of him so as to not listen to his fiancée's annoying voice. Thankfully, the waiter decided to come by with the food at that time, providing more of an excuse to ignore her and another way out of the boring conversation.

_I really don't like the story this Mephiles is spilling out,_ he thought to himself as he began to cut up the steak that was on his plate along with some scalloped potatoes and baby carrots that served as the side. As he began to politely chew away at the piece of meat, he mused, _For one thing, if he really did have a family that's sick with only the mother and himself able to work, then why would he even consider coming aboard this ship at the request of my father? Any normal person would most likely decline to do so and take care of their family, not accept and go off onto another country across the sea. That and the blank expression in his eyes as he says that really bothers me._

_ Secondly, why would he even bother to lie about meeting me for a few seconds in front of my room?_ he continued on with his thought process as Rouge gave up trying to strike up a conversation with him and opted to join in with the other two at the table. _It's not like we did anything illegal during such a short span of time. It's almost as if he has something to hide from us, but what could be worth hiding from such a short meeting? Why lie about something so harmless as meeting me before now?_

_ Lastly, I don't believe him when he said he couldn't get a job besides the one with father five years ago. Hell, that was the year when job applicants and hiring rates were at its highest in Robotropolis history. There should be no reason why he couldn't get a job unless he was some uneducated bum, which I know he's not because of the position he got at father's company. Everything about him just screams of suspiciousness, but I can't put my finger on him. Father may decide to trust him, but I sure as hell don't. He's too unreadable, too contradictory for my own tastes, and nobody at this table seems to notice this except for me._

As Shadow continued to be in his own little world, the others were busy talking about things that he knew nothing about. After all, they were all adults while he was the only teenager amongst them, so he should not really have much of an idea as to what they were talking about to begin with. He just continued eating his steak without saying anything while having plenty to think about to keep him preoccupied. He was torn away from his thoughts, however, once he heard his name being called a few minutes later.

"Now I don't have to keep worrying about you being alone on this ship Shadow," he heard Rouge say happily, causing him to look up from the scalloped potato on his fork and at the woman. "It sure does take a load off of my mind."

"I'm sorry, but what exactly are you talking about here?" the ebon hedgehog questioned, his eyebrow raised as if to emphasize his inquiry. He then added before putting the potato into his mouth, "I wasn't really paying attention to the conversation because I felt that it was private in nature."

"My, you have raised a polite child, Dr. Robotnik," Mephiles responded, his eyes momentarily gaining a sense of emotion and reflecting the opposite of what he was saying. The teen clearly saw this and easily decoded it as saying, "_Is he really that ignorant to the things around him?_" He simply scowled at the comment while taking another potato into his mouth as a source of distraction from the suspicious man.

"That's what I like to think every day myself," the doctor said in a sort of undertone. He then continued in a slightly louder tone, "We were talking about how the plan to have Mephiles as Rouge's personal valet and as your personal bodyguard."

Upon hearing this, Shadow prematurely swallowed a big chunk of potato and felt it lodge inside his throat. With both a look of shock and surprise, he began to choke and cough violently, unintentionally causing a scene in the process as others around them looked over with many different expressions including concern, disgust, and annoyance. Thankfully, the episode was short-lived as the potato finally dislodged itself and flew into the open hand that was covering his mouth during the entire ordeal.

"Are you alright son?" Dr. Robotnik asked with concern in his words as he watched his son place the food onto the plate and downed a glass of water next to him. For some strange reason, however, his facial expression remained unchanged and stoic, almost as if the way he phrased his earlier words were nothing but a lie.

"I-I'm fine," the teen simply responded as he took a deep breath and felt Rouge's hand comforting rubbing away at his back. Being that he was recovering from momentary suffering, he did not complain at the loving gesture this time around. "I'm just...surprised about this. You're going to hire Mephiles to be my personal bodyguard?"

"That is what I said, and I now feel that it's necessary since you can manage to choke on your food by discovering something very surprising. Just imagine how much worse it would be if you're surprised with a threat to your life while you're eating."

"I am most happy to be at your service, Master Shadow," the blackish purple hedgehog responded with a small tilt of his head at the ebon hedgehog that was meant to serve as the seated version of a bow.

Shadow felt beyond shocked and disgusted at the thought of having this man, a person who he had no trust in whatsoever since they first started the dinner, as his personal bodyguard. That meant that he would most likely be hanging around him at all hours of the day, thus effectively wiping away any hopes of personal time he had wished to achieve while trapped on the ship for the next month or so.

"...This man is going to be my bodyguard during this ship cruise?" the ebon hedgehog questioned after his moment of shock passed by and was quickly replaced with rage. "What in hell's name would I even need a bodyguard on such an enclosed space for? It's only going to be for a month. I'm going to need my privacy at some point _outside_ of my room, you know? Have you ever thought of that?"

"Shadow, I will not talk to you about this if you're going to act this disagreeable," Dr. Robotnik simply said as he took a sip out of his glass of water while ignoring the stares that were still present on them since the potato fiasco. "I would like to have a civil conversation about whatever it is that you feel objectionable rather than a heated argument. It's only a waste of time if we continue like this."

"What you're planning is a waste of time!" the teen countered as he abruptly stood up from his seat, startling both his father and fiancée yet while the other man seemingly anticipated the move from the very beginning. "I don't want a bodyguard father. I don't _need_ a bodyguard! You know very well that I can take care of myself; you just don't want to accept the fact that I'm growing up into someone who's capable of protecting himself from certain kinds of danger like those who want to pick a fight with me. And before you even try to make another attempt at a seemingly good suggestion, I also don't want a personal valet, especially if it's going to be this man playing the role."

"Shadow, please try and relax a bit," Rouge pleaded with her fiancé by tugging at his arm while trying to avoid making eye contact with those sitting on other tables and watching them with unwavering eyes. "You're causing a scene here."

"I don't care, Rouge. I'm not going to sit around while my father continues to try and control every single move I make during every waking moment of _my_ life! _I'm_ the one living my own life; I'm not living life so as to appease _his_ personal woes and problems." He then shifted his attention back towards his father while purposefully ignoring Mephiles entirely. "I refuse to have a bodyguard, especially if it's going to be him, following me around this blasted ship twenty-four-seven! If I see or sense him even trying to remotely follow me around, I'll jump off this ship and drown myself faster than you or any of the crew members on board can throw a lifesaver at me!"

And before anybody else could have a chance to say something, the enraged hedgehog stormed out of the dining hall to who knew where. He left behind a very shocked Rouge, an equally shocked Dr. Robotnik, a seemingly indifferent Mephiles who seemed to be cleverly hiding a smirk that shined only through his eyes, and a bunch of shocked diners who have laid witness to the entire scene.

The doctor was the first one to recover from the shock. "I apologize to everyone for this inconvenience," he announced to the entire room. "He's simply stressed about the entire moving period we're going through and hasn't had much time to let it out."

This was when the people started murmuring to themselves. Some seemed to believe his explanation and shook their heads in a sympathetic fashion to the man. Others had raised their eyebrows while also shaking their heads more in disagreement, seemingly taking Shadow's side of the previous argument made public. Some just stayed indifferent and began gossiping about what had just taken place as if it were nothing but a simple piece of juicy news.

"And I must apologize to you for my son's behavior Mephiles," the man apologized to the blackish-purple hedgehog with a small nod of his head and a weak attempt at a smile that seemed quite feeble. "I've never seen him go off like that in my entire life. I imagine the stress must be really getting to him these days."

"It's quite alright, Dr. Robotnik," the hedgehog simply said as he waved it off while offering the still stunned Rouge a reassuring pat on her hand. "I'm sure we all had our episodes at one point during our teenage years. All of us here have been adults for so long; we've forgotten some of the things we as teenagers used to go through. And don't you worry about a thing, my beautiful lady," he added as he directed his words to the bat. "Given due time, everything will be just fine."

"Oh, I do hope you're right on that," the woman responded with a small sigh escaping her lips as she seemed genuinely worried about her fiancé after this scene had unfolded. "I've been engaged to him for a couple of months now, and I have yet to see him act this way until today. Are you sure that is something that will come to pass? He has been acting rather testy for quite a while now."

"I'm quite sure that it's simply just a faze that will quickly come to pass. The only way to help him get over it is to give him the space that he so needs. Once I've given him a few days of space, I'll begin my duties of keeping close watch of your son doctor. Until then, I believe that I should keep my distance."

"I suppose that it's for the best," the portly man agreed rather reluctantly as he let out a hefty sigh. "If I want him to stay safe right now, then the best I can do now is to respect his wishes and provide him with the personal space he needs. I really thank you for your advice and undying patience."

"It's my pleasure sir," Mephiles responded with a small smile of reassurance gracing his lips and directed at the man. He also gave Rouge's hand a comforting peck before letting go of it and taking a sip of water.

During the entire time he was offering reassuring words to his dinner hosts, his facial expression reflected the feeling he was portraying with his words. For the two of them, this was enough to convince them that what he was saying was both right and comforting. However, his eyes, the only part of the body that Shadow had concentrated on the entirety of the dinner service, showed a story different from the tone in his words and his facial expressions. His eyes reflected the same indifferent behavior that he held onto for the entirety of the meal. It was expressionless and made everything he said and did seem like nothing but a complete fake. Truly, Mephiles was a mysterious man who hid behind comforting words that have no comforting meaning to him whatsoever.


	7. Finding Refuge in an Old Friend

Hello everybody. Hope you all enjoyed the nice little ominous feeling I left you all with in the last chapter. Boy, Mephiles sure starts out as an interesting character here, isn't he? His answers sure hold a lot of contradictions inside Shadow's line of thought, and he even lied about meeting the black furred teen earlier in front of his door. Now why would he even do all this, especially with eyes that reflect close to no emotion and only unreadable ones whenever they do shine with emotion?

I think I'll leave you all in the dark on this accord until the time comes. However, you might only get a part of the answer, being that I'm planning to raise a few more questions for you all. I'm trying to incorporate a little bit of a mysterious feel to this story along with the Titanic feel. No, this was not the genre I was thinking of adding that I talked about some chapters ago, although the genre I'm split about will make it's first debut in this chapter.

Anyway, please don't forget to leave a review about this chapter once you're done reading. Although I do like my only two reviewers giving me good insight on what they think and encouragement to keep writing, I would like a few more insights from other people. I'm not sure what everybody else thinks about the story, and I'm already clear on how the two reviewers think of it. So please leave a review of what you think of the story after you read. Until the next update everybody!

* * *

**Chapter 7: Finding Refuge in an Old Friend**

Stirring up a few curious glances, Shadow made his way through the tables of fellow first classmen and towards the diner door with footsteps that could have probably pierced through the floor if they were made of weak and simple wood. His mind was currently in such a high state of anger; steam would have been escaping through his ears like car exhaust pipe if that were humanly possible. Some of the diners he passed by had the decently to avert their eyes away from his figure as he passed by when they sensed his body radiating an aura dangerous enough to kill one if it were able to.

_What the hell was my father thinking when he came up with that proposal?_ The black with red streaked fur hedgehog thought angrily with an angry scowl planted on his face as he finally made it to the double doors and stormed right through them and into the ship's main foyer, turning a couple more heads towards his direction from the area along with their startled gazes. _Does he really think that I would need to be constantly babied while in such a confined space like this? I can take care of myself better than he thinks I can; he just seems to refuse to believe that for whatever reason that's dominating that head of his. You'd think that he's stop with this nonsense after kicking me out to the Robotropolis academy and forcing me to live there for the past six years. It's a bit late for him to be starting to baby me around now._

Without stopping to think about where he wanted to go, his feet took him up the stairs that led to the outside of the ship on the deck. His mind was too busy grumbling about the things he heard and comparing them with things of the past to notice his ascent or the people he passed by and accidentally bumped into. He did hear the angry outbursts and such being vocalized at him, but he paid it no mind and continued to go wherever his feet led him. And it was not until he felt his hands resting upon a doorknob and the coolness of the sea breeze hitting his face did he seem to snap out of his trance.

_Hmm, who'd thought that I would end up bringing myself out here, of all places?_ the ebon hedgehog thought with a sigh as he let go of the door and allowed it to shut silently behind him. He then added in a joking manner with a weak attempt at a smile, _Guess my feet knew where I should go to cool down._

Without any hesitation, he moved over towards the railing and leaned his body against it, taking in a deep whiff of the fresh sea air and its saltiness. He slowly let his held breath out, watching it as it formed a sort of mist before dissipating into the night air as a sightless gas. This showed that it was colder than he first thought tonight. Despite this, it was a cloudless night with the full moon shining down on him and giving slight illumination to the sea in all directions away from the well-lit ship.

_It's times like this when I wish that I was never introduced to him all those years ago,_ he thought bitterly as he continued to stare at the ocean's surface and the reflection of the moon against it. _If he had not shown an interest in my academics, I might be able to live a life better than the one I have with him now. I might even be able to pursue my life's passion without having to be held back by him telling me that academics are more important than exercising my imagination. Hasn't he ever figured that people with no imagination like him are better off living life as a mindless robot, always having to listen to what others have to say? Yeah, I do that right now with him, but I still keep my imagination alive._

"I hope you're not thinking on doing what you said you were going to do back in the dining hall," a voice suddenly said from behind him in a stern tone, violently snapping the teen back into reality with its unfamiliarity that also stirred up a tinge of familiarity within his heart. The person then said in a joking manner, "I would hate to get my good set of clothes sopping wet, but you know that I'll do it if I have to, right?"

Feeling as though he recognized who the owner of the voice was after recovering from the shock, Shadow turned around on the balls of his feet in order to see who the person that approached him was. Upon laying his eyes on the other, he saw that it was a hedgehog with silver fur and quills that seemed to shine against the moonlit sky and give off a pleasantly calming aura. That and his personal aura seemed to radiate that same calming effect that could relax even the most wound up and tense of men. His eyes were an unusual bright golden yellow, one that could possibly rival those of Shadow's ruby reds in terms of radiance and the never dying fire that lived beyond them. And like the ebon furred teen, the other hedgehog had a black bowtie situated on his neck just on top of a tuft of silver fur on his chest to show off his social standing as a first class person.

"Come on Shadow, wipe that stupid dopey look off your face and go back to being all stoic-like and brooding," the silver hedgehog replied with a smile as he approached the ebon hedgehog and placed a white gloved hand held in place at the wrist by a golden cuff with a thin line of jade running across the center on his shoulder. "What you look like right now is definitely not like the Shadow I remember seeing back at the academy. What happened to the hedgehog that would use to only show his true happy self to me and a few other choice guys back during our school days without giving it a second thought?"

"...Silver...?" Shadow spoke out in a voice that was barely above a whisper and disappeared just as his foggy breath did against the wind that the other had to guess what it was that he had just said. Thanks to his slightly heightened animalistic hearing, he did not have to strain too much on that accord. "Is that really you?"

"Well, I doubt that there's another hedgehog walking around on this planet with the same fur and eye color as me," the now christened Silver responded with an amused shake of his head and a smile, his white boots now soundless when he stopped moving. "If there is one around here though, then I'd really doubt that he'd be as good of a joker as me while knowing when to be serious. He probably wouldn't have you to call as one of his best friends."

"No, I meant that I never expected to run into you aboard this ship, of all places," the black hedgehog clarified with a clearing of his throat as he tried to regain his composure back from shocked to his relatively stoic and uncaring nature. Only his friends know that he was not really acting stoic or uncaring; he was just brooding on the things he says and hears during conversation without showing any outward emotion, and Silver could clearly see this happening right now in front of him. "I'm sure you kind of know it already since you're seeing me here, but I left pretty abruptly without so much as being able to give proper goodbyes to you or my other friends back home."

"Let me guess; your father forced you on this ship move across the sea to live in Mobius with him. He can't bear the thought of losing all of his wealth and fortune over an economy that has seen rock bottom and continues to dig itself into a deeper hole and leaving you behind to pick up the remnant pieces. I'm not surprised that he did that, but I am on the fact that he decided to drag you along for the ride. What happened there? I thought you never did get along well with him."

"As if I would even know what's going on in that old man's head," the ebon hedgehog said, referring to his father as something else for the first time since he boarded the ship and actually had the time to engage in casual conversation with a familiar face. "I would think that he's planning on having me be the source of his recovery in terms of wealth once we manage to settle down on Mobius. Apparently, I'm better to him as a source of income than I am as a rebellious son."

"Judging from the rumors of how he likes his money more than you in combination with what you told me, I suppose that's not too far from the truth," Silver said in a sad tone as he leaned against the railing, the other soon following suit with the action. "If you don't mind me asking, how is it that he's planning to make his grand recovery in the social world after his fall from the stock market business?"

"He's planning on marrying me off to some thirty year old woman that he had good connections with through his now decimated stock business. Apparently, she once owned half of this business that sold designer brand clothing and furs to mainly the rich. She said that she pulled out of her end of the partnership on a hunch about the economy before it became the way it is today. I barely even know anything about the woman apart from what I just told you, but I guess that all he needs to know is that she's trustworthy and has a lot of money for him to inherit once our coronation has come to pass."

"Jeez, it sounds like you got some serious bad luck that loves to hang out with you these past couple of months. Either that or someone's actually managed to successfully pull some kind of stupid voodoo crap on you from somewhere and make it work," he added in a joking tone and a light playful chuckle, earning him a glare from the ebon furred hedgehog that was anything but threatening. "I'm pretty sure that I already know the answer to my next question, but I just have to ask you it. What did you do to try and get yourself out of that mess?"

"Everything that you remember seeing try to do to get out of some class work plus a little bit more. I tried to give off the silent treatment whenever my dad would talk to me about money and marriage in the same sentence. I tried talking to him in a calm way in hopes that he'll get the message and stop pressuring me into something that I don't want to do. I tried just about every single thing that I knew how to do without resorting to any pranks I had given up four years ago in order to get him to lay off on me about it, but he just doesn't seem to get it. Either that or he just plain closes his ears off on anything that I say about this just because I'm still too young in his eyes to understand any of it."

"Boy, it sounds like you really did try everything that you could do in order to get out of this messy marriage problem," the silver furred hedgehog replied with a low whistle as he saw Shadow lean against the railing with him. He then added in a lower tone so as to not attract any unwanted attention from nearby people who might have been listening in on them, "Don't you think now's the time to tell him your darkest secret that you saw fit to tell me so long ago so that you can really get out of this? I can't think of any better way out of getting married to a woman you don't even know than that."

"Uh, I would prefer to stay alive and regrettably married to someone I barely know instead of being six feet under with a ton of dirt piled on top of me," the ebon teen responded as he shot Silver a strange look that only his friends knew how to decode as "why don't you give it a try smartass". "I don't think you need me to tell you how my dad feels about these things. He prides himself in being a traditional man and would easily fire his workers and even disown me for as he so puts it, 'wandering off from the road of tradition'. The last thing I need now is a vengeful parent who's out to get me because of a revelation I made to him that he emphatically chooses to not believe or accept."

"Yeah, I suppose you're right on that. He is infamously known as the traditionalist of all traditional businessmen amongst us. Some of us, myself included, even think that he won't be able to handle the new era of business people about to flood the world if he can't learn how to move on with the times and that he should just retire. Hope you don't mind us thinking like that about him."

"Hey, you're talking to a hedgehog who just so happens to be on the same thought boat as you are," the other responded in a humorous tone accompanied with a goofy smile that he had not used in so long. "And while we're on the topic of businesses, how have things been holding up on your end of things ever since we graduated from the academy? The last time I talked to you, you were dating this pretty girl you met at the academy named Blaze."

"Well, we're still under the dating status," Silver explained with a small sigh that was far from being depressing or anything like that. Rather, it was more of a sigh of contentment at what he had. "I would like to take it further than that, but her parents are very adamant on waiting until we're both eighteen. I can't say that I didn't win points with them, though. They like me so much; they actually went so far as to trust me to become a key player in their business expansion deals from potential buyers."

"Wow, are you being serious with me Silver? I knew you were always on top of your game when it came to school work, but I never thought that you would have been able to play such a key role in any business right now. You're only seventeen years old like me, for heaven's sake! Don't you think you're moving up the ladder just a little bit too quickly for your own good here? And besides, isn't their company supposed to be solely family-run in terms of expansion and all that other stuff?"

"You know better than anyone that I can more than handle my own on this so long as I make sure not to take on too much at one time and ask for help when I know I need it. And don't tell me you managed to forget about Blaze's father being taken to the hospital and diagnosed with pulmonary heart disease? It made the front page news since the company continued to thrive during the beginnings of the economic meltdown. Since then, he trusted her with most of the company dealings with her mom working as her advisor and taking care of more complicated matters. Because of her now being the president of the company, they had since changed the name to Blaze Inc. to accommodate her."

"Oh yeah, I completely forgot about that. Then again, that was around the time I was stuck with this whole marriage crap. Never really did feel like paying attention to anything then. How is her father doing, anyhow? I haven't had much chance to keep up with his condition."

"Thankfully, they managed to find a few suitable donors that would have great chances of accommodating with his body, so there's no immediate threat to his life. However, the procedure still holds a lot of risks, so he gave Blaze temporary presidential authority of the company that will turn permanent should the unfortunate occur."

"I'll bet everybody's on pins and needles about all this. However, that still doesn't really answer the question as to how you were able to get yourself to work on something within the company that's only reserved for immediately family members?"

"Oh, you never were the one to forget about something that easily," Silver responded with a shake of his head at the other's sudden change in topics. "If you're really that curious about the whole thing, Blaze asked her father during one of his lucid moments that she might need someone to deal with business deals and expansions while he was recuperating. I was there when she recommended me, much to my surprise, and he actually accepted her proposal, an even bigger shocker to me that I think I actually fainted."

"I can so imagine you doing that right now," Shadow said as he allowed a full on laugh leave his lips at the other's confession, earning him an annoyed scowl. "You always were the one who easily gotten himself so excited to the point where you could potentially faint. Now that I think about it, I think this is the first time I even heard of you fainting after suffering from a strong emotional spike."

"And hopefully it'll be the only time," the silver furred hedgehog semi growled as he absentmindedly rubbed at one of his glove cuffs. "Anyway, that's how I managed to snag myself a job normally reserved for those who have ties with the family. Upon giving his reasoning as to why he accepted so quickly and easily, he said that he already considered me as a part of the family. He also gave us his blessings if we were to marry after he passed away. He sure got an earful from Blaze when he made that comment."

"I half-expected that to be the case when you said that," the ebon hedgehog responded with a small chuckle leaving his lips when he heard this and tried to imagine it happening inside his head. "From what I remember of the girl, she never really liked any kind of negative talk before the talked about event even happened. I think she was more of a positive and optimistic thinker when it came to problems some might bite off their fingers with worry over. That and she believed in jinxes and a few of those other crap business."

"Well, everybody has their quirks that make them into who they are. I guess her believing in bad karma and stuff is what makes her unique, even if it does kind of make her out into some weird woman. And please don't tell her I said that if you run into her."

"Trust me; I wouldn't tell her your darkest secret if the world was burning all around me. However, if you do manage to somehow piss me off beyond belief during our long stay here on this trap floating across the ocean, I might accidentally let slip some information about our _personal_ adventures from inside our living quarters when we were living bunking together as roommates at the academy."

"Why do I feel you would really do that if I somehow end up making you that angry?" Silver questioned with a small groan as his cheeks gained a small tinge of pink that could easily have been read as a reaction to the chilled air by anyone passing by. "And besides, you're making sound like you're going to tell her everything we did and then some more. We only participated in some nice innocent fun that any hormonal and sane teenager would probably do in this day and age. What we do is what I like to call 'personal bodily exploration without going crossing the line'."

"Do you really have to act so uptight about the whole entire thing?" Shadow questioned with a small snicker emanating from the back of his throat. "The way you make it sound like, it's almost as if the entire world had the opportunity to discover us fooling around then. And like you just said, it isn't as though we did anything hardcore that we might end up regretting anytime soon. Is the stress finally starting to get to you, my good friend? Do you want us to have a repeat of one of our casual weekend nights that we used to have in order to help you unwind? It helped you before, and I'm sure it'll help you now."

"Oh, would you please stop with your seductive talk that's starting to border on creepy right now?" the silver furred hedgehog asked in a tone that was half playful and half serious. "You know I go one way and one way only, so stop trying to seduce me. No offense here, but I'm not the one who discovered he preferred guys over girls after having a little bit of adult fun with his best friend a couple of times. And besides, I'm going to have a meeting soon with another man on board who has ties with Blaze Inc., so I couldn't go messing around with you tonight even if I wanted to."

"No offense taken there buddy. All I was really doing there was to help you unwind a bit by making you uncomfortable, and I think I managed to succeed in doing so. It's not like I was trying to get to you purposefully or anything like that. You know I wouldn't do anything like that. If you offered me the chance to do so though, then we'd be talking about a completely different story altogether."

"Alright, let's go ahead and move onto a different topic before you weird me out for life here. Have you managed to find someone special to your heart like I did? You know, someone other than me who you could tell your secrets to and spend the rest of your life with in eternal happiness?"

"Don't you remember that that part of my life has already been decided for me by both my dad and his partner in crime, my fiancée? Honestly Silver, I may not spend my life with her in eternal happiness or tell her my most precious secrets, but I'll be caught dead before I go around with anyone else. I might as well be dead if dad catches me professing my love to someone other than Rouge. He gets something in his mind and there's no stopping him from going ahead with it."

"Well, I guess going behind her back and cheating is out of the question then. It looks like the only way out of this for you is to go ahead and kill yourself. It's been nice hanging out with you while it lasted buddy."

"And since when did you start giving out morbid advice like that?" Shadow asked with a half scowl directed at Silver. "I thought you were always the guy who likes to steer potential arguments and problems _away_ from actually taking place."

"You didn't even hear what I really had in mind here," Silver responded with an amused smirk on his face as he turned to look at the ebon hedgehog right in the eyes, their brilliant irises clashing with each other. "Don't even start on saying that I'm actually suggesting that you really kill yourself here. What I was thinking was that you could _fake_ your death, and no one would be none the wiser except myself."

"...Are you being serious here?" the red streaked hedgehog questioned with a raised eyebrow and a "what the heck?" look written all over his face. "You want me to fake my death so that I'll be able to get out of marrying Rouge and stop my dad from driving me nuts? Don't you think I've already considered it at least once before I even got on board this ship? If I couldn't find a time or place to do that on land, how the hell am I going to be able to pull this off on a ship with only so many places to hide out in? That and I'd have to be in hiding for the whole month and a half while we're out here at sea."

"Oh yeah, I kind of forgotten about that little detail," the silver hedgehog admitted somewhat sheepishly as he rubbed the back of his neck. "There really isn't that many places to hide out from everybody that'll be looking everywhere for you. That and getting off the ship once we dock would be even harder with everyone probably already thinking that you're as dead as you could be."

"Eh, I guess I got to give you a couple of points for trying there. And besides, even if we could get that crazy plan of yours to work, where could we possibly find someone who would actually agree to go along with the act of pretending to kill me? I don't want you getting into trouble if the plan backfires, and other people would probably think I'm crazy before they would even consider doing that for me."

"Do you always have to make it a habit to point out every single flaw in my ideas? You've always done that since the day we first met. Hell, you even did that when we first met in class when I gave out a flawed answer. You honestly have no idea how much that bugs me, especially when it's coming from you."

"And when are you going to stop letting these things get to you? It doesn't do you any good to get frustrated over something as small as this. Besides, I thought my way of pointing out mistakes was what made you consider becoming my friend. Or was it because you discovered how lonely I was every day and decided to give me some company?"

"I'd say that it was a combination of the two, although it was more the fact that you seemed a lot nicer than what I had you pegged for when I first saw you as my classmate. I guess this goes to show that you just can't judge a book by its cover before giving it a good read first. That was one of those rare times I was happy to be proven wrong. It ended up netting me one of the greatest friends I could've asked for.

"Anyway, I don't know about you, but I'm going to go ahead and make my way back inside the ship," Silver said as he gave off a slight visible shiver, his glove cuff clanging on the railing a bit from the sudden movement. "My fur's starting to freeze over a bit here, and a few bits of salt are starting to get themselves stuck on me. You coming with me Shadow, or are you going to try and freeze off some of those fat pockets around your stomach while raising your cholesterol at the same time?"

"Nah, I think I'll stay out here for a little while longer and enjoy the sea air," Shadow responded with a smirk and a small shake of his head as he watched Silver back away from the railing a bit while shaking off some white grains of salt off of his fur. "I still got a few things on my mind, and I still need to cool down a bit here."

"Alright, just make sure that you don't try anything funny or crazy out here," the silver hedgehog said as he walked towards the door that would lead him to the main foyer before turning around and flashing a quick smile. "I don't want all my wasted effort in keeping you from really killing yourself to be for naught."

"Oh, hurry up and get out of here before I end up killing you for always bringing that up," the ebon hedgehog threatened playfully as he made a small advance to the silver hedgehog. The other backed up accordingly in an equally playful fashion towards the door until it was at his back. The people that happened to walk by them continued on their way without so much as a second glance; some of them even gave off the smallest hints of a smile at the sight of them being so playful.

"See you later my big and black furry friend," the other responded with a smile before turning around and opening the door. It soon closed with a slight clicking sound and Shadow was once again as alone as he was when he first came above deck.

_Never in a million years did I thought that I would run into Silver on this ship,_ Shadow thought with a rather dopey smile on his face as he continued to lean against the ship's railing. _And to think, he's actually now running a key part of a business with his girlfriend's father's permission. I always knew he would be able to shoot for something big after we graduated from the academy; I never thought that it'd happen this soon. Oh well, guess this goes to show that anything can happen when given the right time and situation._

With a small sigh leaving his lips, the ebon hedgehog decided to make his way to the back of the Titanic, remembering that there were a couple of benches there along with the soft splashing sounds of the ship's propellers hitting and churning the waters. This unexpected visit from an old schoolmate was just what he needed to unwind from the frustrating dinner service he had been a part of some time ago, yet he still felt the need to further relax with the subtle sounds of the ocean churning away reaching his ears. And with that in his mind, he breathed in the cool salty sea air and continued walking.


	8. Two Hedgehogs' First Meeting

Hello everybody! Welcome to the first month anniversary of the creation of this experimental story that I came up with on a totally random thought that I explained in my very first note on that I wrote of the first chapter. It's all starting to fall into place for me, and I hope that this will be able to continue to add on to the plot.

Anyway, to the person who sent me a review saying that I should start moving things faster. If I moved things any faster than this, then I'd be sacrificing character growth and working as if this were one of my action stories. For something like this, there is more character interaction rather than action and stuff and kind of requires the details I'm putting in, or at least it's necessary for me.

Anyway, I do enjoy hearing when people enjoy reading my story. On that note, please don't forget to leave a review after you're done reading. Until the next update everybody.

P.S,

Sorry if this note sounds kind of random at times. It's right now 3:15 here on my part of the world, and I'm as tired as I could possibly be right now. Got to go to sleep now. Hope you all like this chapter created during one of my many sleep deprived moments. Later everybody!

* * *

**Chapter 8: Two Hedgehogs' First Meeting**

"Alright, can we stop playing poker now?" Sonic asked with a groan leaving his mouth as he saw the cash pile in front of him slowly disappear before his very eyes to the experienced poker player that was his buddy. They had been playing for who got to keep how much money for the past hour now, and the hedgehog was starting to get both bored and dejected at the game. "I would like to keep at least some of the money that I managed to win for the both of us instead of you hogging all of it."

"Sounds like that lucky break you had back at the bar isn't going to be coming back anytime soon," Knuckles said with a triumphant and smug look on his face as he took the money that was in the pot in front of him towards his pile. "Oh well, you can just consider this as revenge for trying to give me a heart attack during that game. Besides, you also borrowed some money from me before this windfall that you never paid back, so I can now say that your debt to me has been paid in full."

"But couldn't you just give me a little bit of your side of the cash so it wouldn't seem so lopsided like it is right now?" the cobalt hedgehog questioned with a weird look on his face as he looked at both piles and saw that he had less than a fourth of what the other had. "I don't think I really owed you that much money. That and I'll probably be in the poor house by the time we get ourselves settled in on Mobius. Do you really want me to be in that kind of a situation and not help me out when I need it?"

"Hey, that sounds like a pretty great idea you just gave me there," the red echidna said with a mock happily thoughtful look on his face, one that caused the other to look at him in disbelief. "That'll just mean that I'll have one less thing to worry about in the place that I'll soon proudly call home."

"Y-you're not actually being serious about that, are you Knuckles? I thought that we were going to keep a lookout for each other's backs no matter what happened to either of us. What happened to that sudden change of heart?"

"Are you kidding Sonic? Don't you know that I was just joking around with you? Since when in the entire history of our friendship has I ever really left you out to dry when you were in trouble? You really should learn how to unwind a bit on here. I think the stress of being forever surrounded by water on all sides is starting to get to you."

For a moment, both teens were quiet as they continued to sit where they have been sitting for the past hour. One was busy counting up the money he managed to win while the other seemed to have been silently contemplating something in his head with a thoughtful look on his face. It did not look like any of them was going to be doing anything outside of what they had already been doing anytime soon.

About another minute of mindless staring that cleverly masked his musing thoughts; Sonic stood up rather abruptly, although not so much so that Knuckles looked up from his money counting. Without saying much, he began to shove what little money he had left under his name into his bag before throwing it onto the top bunk.

"If I'm really stressed, then I guess I'll just have to go for a little stroll," he said with a cocky half-smile at his version of a simple answer. "I just lost a good chunk of my money to you, and you're here trying to rub it in to me. Of course I'll be acting a bit stressed after all that. At least I don't have to shell out more money just to go for a nice calming walk. And being surrounded the water isn't bothering me right now as much as you say."

"Why is it that I just can't believe that when you say it? And I thought you said that you wanted to stay in here for the rest of the night. I'm sure you said something to that effect after we finished having dinner with Tails."

"Oh, screw what I said. That was one whole long hour ago. Ever heard of having a sudden change of heart? Besides, I really want to see the ocean while it's night out," Sonic added in a tone that he hoped sounded convincing to the other while trying to change the subject. "I never had the chance to see the ocean out in the middle of it with the moon shining down on it. You can call me a romantic guy if you want to, but something about the moon hitting the ocean really sounds beautiful. Speaking of which, have I ever told you about a night like this when I figured out that I had thing for guys more than I did for girls?"

"Alright, hurry up and get out of here before you start boring me with your boring talk that you always do whenever I start getting on your nerves," Knuckles responded as he closed his ears with his hands and began walking as far away from the hedgehog as possible. "You know how much I hate it when you start getting like this. I don't want to be hearing that stupid story again about how you found out you were gay and how hard it is to find someone you're really in love with and all that. I have no problem with who you are, but that story is getting real old. Now get out of here before I beat you to a pulp and force you out of here."

"Not until you pay me some of your winnings to get me to leave," the cobalt hedgehog responded in an attempt to try and get some of his lost money back from his buddy. All he received instead was a scowl from his buddy who probably did not hear what he said since he was still covering his ears with his gloved hands.

"Guess you can't hear me, huh? Alright, I'll get out of here. No need to be glaring daggers at me and hoping that I'll melt into a puddle of goo here."

Once again not getting a response from the now annoyed echidna, the hedgehog made his way to the door and exited the cabin.

_Yeesh, he makes it sound like I'm hard to be around sometimes,_ Sonic thought as he began to walk through the cramped hallways and look for the way up to the upper decks. _Then again, that's what makes him fun to hang around; he's always too easy to make fun of and tease. You'd think that after spending a good chunk of our lives as friends together and living on the streets, his temper would've mellowed out a bit._

With a smirk that would not be leaving his lips for a good while, he continued to make his way up to the upper decks where the fresh sea air was awaiting him. Being that it was still somewhat early in the evening, there were quite a few people walking back and forth in the hallways, making his trek to the upper levels of the ship a lot more cramped than it had to be. He eventually made it to the stairs that led him up to B Deck and to another hallway that was a lot less cramped and more maneuverable.

_I don't understand why they had to make the C Deck hallways so cramped and hard to move around_, he thought in an annoyed fashion as he saw some children playing what seemed to be a game of tag in the more spacious area with a small smile. _Did they end up going over their budget or something like that when it came to that level and had to drastically downsize the original project? I bet they'll have a lawsuit on their hands when somebody who's a claustrophobic ends up fainting and hitting their head hard on the wall or something like that. Then again, whoever takes care of those finances must have more money to burn that they could care less of a potential safety suit._

With his continued inner rants continuing to play out in his mind, Sonic passed by a couple sitting on a bench and smiling a smile that expressed their love for each other. They were a boy and a girl, both of which looked to have been in their mid-teen years. He inwardly sighed at this loving gesture as he continued on his way to the next set of stairs situated just a few feet away from him.

_Oh, what I wouldn't give to have someone like that sitting next to me and loving me for who I am,_ he thought with a dopey smile on his face and a slight daydream look in his eyes, causing him to nearly trip over the first step as he accidentally kicked it. With a small stumble before regaining his balance and heading up, he continued on with his train of thought. _Almost every guy who saw me to be attractive were either unattractive themselves or were just plain old. God, I never thought that Robotropolis had that many pedophiles roaming freely on the streets. I may be a handsome devil, but do I have a sign on my back that says 'cute hooker boy looking for some action' on my back?_

_ And you'd think that having other guys my age hitting on me would be a much better improvement from the old farts,_ he continued on with his thought process as he finally reached A Deck and proceeded to find the door that would lead him to the upper deck outside. _Most of them are just way too hormonal; they just want to get into my figurative pants for some fun and call it a day. I thank god I'm not that hormonal, but would it kill to just find someone around my age who wants more with me than just some nice action in bed and all that? I may seriously be different than other teenagers my age in this, but I want to have a relationship instead of a hormonal driven one-night stand._

With his brain continuing on with this rather strange track of thought, he barely registered a few high class people walking right by him. Most of them, a good majority of them being well dressed women, threw him a dirty look at both his looks and his so-called rude behavior at not moving out of their way quickly enough. He completely ignored all of that and soon found himself at the designated door a few seconds later.

Once outside, he felt the cool sea breeze hitting against his azure pelt and the smell of salt assaulting his shiny black nose. His smile, which had disappeared some time during his strange thought process, came back to his lips as he looked up and saw the cloudless sky shining brightly with the dim light of the moon. It was full and calmly dominated the sky full of stars with its bright and almost holy-like majestic presence.

"Ah, nothing like the fresh scent of the sea breeze to help with the relaxation period," Sonic replied with a sigh of contentment while taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly. He then moved towards the railing and leaned against it. "As much as I hate water, I can't really say that I'm not enjoying this. This is definitely one of those rare moments where I actually like to be out here surrounded by water. The only gripe I have with this is that we have to be out here for more than a month. Couldn't they have found a way to make this trip even faster without being out here for so long?"

After a couple minutes of silent admiration of the ocean surface brightly illuminated by the moon's light, the blue hedgehog stood upright from the railing and began to move towards the back of the ship. He had no idea why he was heading that way, but he just felt like moving somewhere rather than just staying in one place. Unless in some rare occasion, he did not like to stay in one place very long; although it looked like he was going to have to learn how to get used that that idea while on board the ship.

As it was when he was in the B Deck hallway, he saw some children running around laughing and having fun. There were a lot more of them, all of them ranging from humans to other anthropomorphic animals such as him, otherwise known as anthros, playing tag and hide-and-seek. They were of varying ages, and it was also nice to see that there were children on board the ship rather than just adults from both sides of the social ladder. It definitely gave a sense of a relaxing contrast to the hedgehog's mind and assured him that he was not going to be surrounded by people who were all stuffed up and serious.

After walking by them with a small smile given to one who happened to pass him by, he passed by another small group of people. They were three adults sitting one the folding chairs with clothes that looked a lot like they were first class people. They were a combination of humans and anthros who sounded like they were talking about business matters with papers and folders in their hands and briefcases resting idly beside them.

_I guess some of them are on a business trip and decided to be the first ones to ride on this ship in the process,_ Sonic thought as he walked by them without a second glance, whereas the others took a moment to look watch him pass them by and shoot some nasty glances at the process at him. _No need to start getting nasty with me, you rich snobs. I could care less about whatever it is you guys are talking about. I highly doubt that I'd be anywhere remotely near interested anyway._

Now passed the three rich people talking with each other about who knows what and shooting him looks for no good reason whatsoever, the teen did not pass by anyone else on his way to the destination his feet were choosing to take him to. He was now able to enjoy the scenery that passed by him ever so slowly thanks to his walking pace, although the scene was hardly anything memorable enough to worth remembering or mentioning. It was really just ship parts and areas of the ship that he would not be allowed to enter under any circumstance. The one thing he never really got tired of looking though and kept gazing at was the surface of the water, its clarity not once being marred by unnecessary ripples and shining brilliantly under the wondrous gaze of the full moon above. And it was not long before he heard the sounds of the water slowly being churned underneath him reached his ears and indicating that he was close if not already at the back of the ship where the propellers were working as hard as they could with the engines to keep the ship moving on its course.

"Wow, I didn't think that the sound of the water moving like this would sound so calming," Sonic said out loud as his eyes involuntarily closed ever so slightly in a relaxing manner while moving towards the source of the sound. "I still can't believe that I'm actually going back home after so long. Sure, I don't even remember a single thing about it, but it really is nice to be able to see what it looks like for the first time in my life in person rather than just in books and flyers."

Now next to the railing, the cobalt hedgehog leaned over it ever so slightly so as to get a better view at the thing that was making the subtle splashing noises and keeping the ship moving on its course. Once he had a good view, he saw the propellers as nothing but a complete blur thanks to how fast they were moving. The one thing he could see clearly though was that they were a rather dull form of red.

With a relaxing sigh escaping his lips, he allowed his mind to forget about the loss he had against Knuckles in their game of poker and sat on a bench that was nearby. Now completely relaxed with only the calming noises of the water keeping him company, he closed his eyes and began of random things that liked to make their way into his head from time to time for no apparent reason. He soon felt himself doze off and was fast asleep with his mouth hanging slightly open and showing off his perfect set of sharp teeth.

Unfortunately for him, his dozing period did not last more than ten minutes at the most when his sensitive ears picked up the sound of light footsteps making their way to the area. They flicked a bit to the barely noticeable sound against the wooden floor, causing him to stir a bit and open his eyes ever so slightly. Once he was fully awake and regained his bearings, he turned his head around to see if he would be able to see who it was that was approaching his position. Luckily for him, he was able to do so without too much of an effort.

"I'm sorry, but am I disturbing something here?" the person, a black furred and red streaked hedgehog with a black bowtie situated above his tuft of white chest fur, asked in a tone that was pure apologetic without a hint of sarcasm.

"No, nothing to really disturb on my end," Sonic responded in a slightly groggy tone while subconsciously taking note of the other hedgehog's appearance all the way down to his shoes that looked nearly identical to his sneakers. "I wasn't doing much of anything. I was just relaxing a bit here and probably dozed off by mistake."

"Well, this is probably the most relaxing place on this ship, what with the cool crisp sea air blowing lightly by your face and the soft subtle sounds of the calm water churning away right underneath us," the other admitted with a small chuckle as he took a seat on the free space next to the cobalt hedgehog. "That's practically the reason why I came here myself; I got some stress that I would rather forget than deal with right now."

"Really? No offense, but I didn't think that you'd have anything to be getting all stressed about," the other responded rather abruptly as his brain finally started working at full capacity and he finally identified the other to be a first classman. "Aren't you a bit young to be having any kind of stress, especially when you look like a pretty young first class guy with no business to take over until a few more years?"

"Humph, you're a direct hedgehog with a sharp mind, aren't you?" the black hedgehog responded in a surprisingly calm voice for one who had just been talked to in a rather unrefined way that it could have almost been considered insulting. He then responded with a smile that practically screamed of amusement, "And just so you know, I'm only seventeen years old. In terms of being a teenager, I hardly consider that to be young."

"Wow, you're one of those rare first class guys I've seen who have some bite in them that works alongside with their humorous side. Just to see if I'm right on this, do you mind telling me what your name is?"

"I don't see what that has to do with anything, but I think I'll humor you on it. After all, you seem like a very likable fellow, although your attitude can easily drive one to think that you might be a bit brazen and rough around the edges."

"Hey, I resent that comment you tall, dark, and deceivingly handsome hedgehog!" Sonic exclaimed with a playful scowl on his face and his tongue stuck in an equally playful manner out at the other. "I think I'll take back my earlier comment about you being different from the others. You're starting to sound just as bad as them."

"Oh, there's no need to get your quills all riled up over something as simple as that," the ebon hedgehog joked with a small chuckle at the childish behavior Sonic exuded. "I don't think it really suits your overall personality. Then again, I suppose it just comes along with the 'rough around the edges' feel about you. Anyway, my name's Shadow Robotnik," he introduced himself as he politely placed his gloved hand in front of the other in a greeting manner. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"Nice to meet you Shadow," the cobalt hedgehog said as he took the hand that was being offered to him and shook it warmly, but not before shooting the other a strange look at his previous comment. "My name's Sonic. I don't really have a last name or anything like that; but if you really want to attach one to me, then I guess Sonic Hedgehog should work well enough for formal manners. Even if I had an official last name, I doubt that there's any other seventeen-year-old third class passenger on this entire ship with a name as cool as mines." He immediately cringed at the words he naturally said without thought, feeling as if he had just placed a gap between him and the guy he had just met.

"A seventeen-year-old third class hedgehog, huh?" the other now known to Sonic as Shadow repeated with a sense of thoughtfulness more than anything else in his tone. It was hard to tell whether it was a good type of thoughtfulness or the bad type. "I don't think I ever met anybody from the third class before."

"Uh, guess I'm not putting up a very good first impression for people of my level," the hedgehog asked nervously as he chuckle in the same manner along with a shrug of his shoulders. "Oh well, I guess us third class guys are destined to give bad impressions to anybody outside of our social circle no matter how hard we try."

"And just where is it that you managed to get such a notion planted into that head of yours?" Shadow asked with a frown appearing on his face when the cobalt hedgehog made the discouraging comment about himself and quite possibly his friends. "Unlike what most other first classmen think, I am not what you would consider the typical out of all of them. I like to get to know the person underneath the clothing, or fur in your case, before getting any kind of predetermined thoughts. It's a habit I learned when I was little, and it's one that I don't intend to abandon anytime soon."

"Wow, you really are what some would say the black sheep of the family, no pun intended of course," the other responded with amazement written all over his face that was grinning at his small joke. "Either that or you managed to hit your head some time ago and think you're a first class guy with an attitude usually reserved for people like me."

"I assure you, I've never been hit in the head so hard that I would have somehow lost my memory. I did get hit in the head with a fast moving beach ball before, but that's a different story that has nothing to do with this."

"A beach ball? Despite that probably sounding something that would be funny as hell to see, I can't really see you playing around with something as simple as that. I see you more as someone who'd be at school studying on how to take over your family's business when the time is right. Wouldn't that kind of take away any and opportunities for you to have some fun with your friends?"

"Unfortunately, the private boarding school I attended concentrated more on our good work ethics rather than our friendly social habits. Any kind of talking we did with others was just meant as exercises on how to properly speak and what to talk about during potential business meetings. Boring, I know; but that was the life I was forced to live through during my young teenage years, living the same lives as others before me.

"Then again, I wasn't exactly one of the typical students who only worked his butt off at the academy," Shadow continued on as the other continued to listen intently to the person whom he had just met a few minutes ago share a few things about his personal life. "I managed to make a couple of good friends with people who had the same mindset as me. We found ways to squeeze in some fun while keeping up with our work and not getting caught. If there was one thing the academy didn't like to enforce, it was to have any kind of personal fun with anybody while there was important work to be done."

"Jeez, it sounds like you had it pretty rough growing up," Sonic responded with a low whistle when the red striped hedgehog finished talking a little bit about his life at the academy he attended. "It sounds even rougher than mines. I was a pretty poor guy at the start of my teenage years. Been living on the streets of Robotropolis with my best buddy from then to now, but we always managed to survive all these years while having some fun at the same time. I guess the thing we both have in common with these different scenarios is that we managed to make the better out of our bad situations."

"I can sense that there's something more to your story; however, it's not really any of my business to pry any further from what you've already told me," the ebon hedgehog stated without any indication of curiosity beyond what was projected in his response.

"The same could be said with you," the cobalt hedgehog countered as he got up from the bench and walked forward a few steps towards the railing. "I get the feeling that you are a pretty rebellious guy underneath this façade you call acting like a first class. I'm sure I don't need to ask, but am I anywhere near right on that?"

"Humph, you sound like a pretty good judge of character," the other said with an amused huff of his breath as he, too, got up and leaned against the railing. "Either that or you're just one of those people who always manage to have luck on their side no matter what they do. Which one do you think it is?"

"I like to think that it's a combination of the two, although my buddy likes to call it dumb luck that always results of my stupidity. I'm telling you, he's too stubborn for his own good. I still can't believe that I consider him to be my good buddy."

Before he could say anything else, Sonic saw something shimmering out of the corner of his eye. Interested, he turned his head a bit to get a better look at what it was. What he saw completely shocked him, so much so that the next few seconds of time were acted solely on his instinct.

"Look out!" he shouted as he brought his arms around Shadow and pulled him down to the deck floor along with him. Just a little over a second later, a sharp sound reverberated through the night sky, shattering the quiet peacefulness and replacing it with a strange ghostly sense of tension.

In the next second, Sonic picked up a small object next to him, a metallic toy that was most likely left by a child that was playing around there earlier, and threw it right at where he remembered seeing the shiny object. He soon heard the sound of the object hitting its mark, confirmed by the sound of a man shouting in both surprise and pain accompanied with the sound of something falling to the ground.

"Don't you dare run away, you coward!" the cobalt hedgehog shouted angrily as he got up to his feet quicker than any ordinary person was able to and ran to where he heard the voice. By the time he got there, however, he was greeted with empty space and the object that the assailant was forced to abandon resting in front of his feet.

"Wh-what the hell was that?" Shadow questioned, stunned by the suddenness of the past few seconds' events rolling by like a boulder flattening him to the floor. "What'd you find there Sonic?"

"Not our attacker, that's for sure," he responded as he bent down and picked up the object forgotten by the assailant, a simple handgun made of silver and a brown plastic hand grip. He could feel the heat emanating from the butt of the gun, clearly from when it was fired at them. "It looks like I managed to make him leave us a little parting gift before he left."

"Don't go picking up that damn gun!" the ebon hedgehog exclaimed as he picked himself up onto his feet and walked back to the railing where he was at before being pushed to the ground. "Leave it for the authorities to mess around with."

"Is the bullet around there?" the other asked as he continued to examine the weapon in his hand, clearly not heeding the first class hedgehog's warning.

"If it weren't for you, that bullet would've most likely be in one of us right now. It managed to get itself lodged into the railing here. What the hell kind of person would want to kill us here on this ship?"

Before he could say anything else, he heard the sound of rushing feet quickly approaching their position. It was most likely some passengers and crewmembers running to check in on what the sound was.

"What's going on around here?" a voice that was quite familiar to Shadow was heard questioning as the footsteps soon came to a stop. When he turned around, he saw Mephiles standing right in front of Sonic and eyeing him suspiciously before quickly placing his hands on his wrists and behind his back. "So, you thought that you could go ahead and kill off Mr. Robotnik's only son on this ship did you? Well, that's not going to be happening on my watch anytime soon."


	9. Of Accusations and Misinterpretations

Hello everybody! Here's the new chapter and the chapter that will show what happened after the last one. I just couldn't help but to put some small amount of action into this story as well with a small bit of mystery. Just who was it that shot at Sonic and Shadow? Which one of them were meant to be the intended bullet's target? Or was it that they just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and almost ended up taking the bullet for some unforeseen person? So many possibilities, only one of them can be right. And for those of you wondering, this mysterious shooting is going to become a part of a plot while helping to supplement _the_ plot.

Now that we got all of the mysterious and ominous stuff out of the way, you can all go ahead and start reading this new chapter. I hope that you all enjoy the aftermath of what could've been a rather abrupt end to this story. Please don't forget to leave a review after you're done reading. Until the next update everybody!

* * *

**Chapter 9: Of Accusations and Misinterpretations**

_How the hell did I manage to get myself into this mess?_ Sonic thought as his arms were still being held behind his back by another hedgehog that had blackish purple fur on him and a strange aura to accompany the unusual coloring. It had been a few minutes since the shooting incident that had almost claimed either his or Shadow's life were it not for his quick thinking, and this was the thanks he got for acting all heroic. A crowd of crewmembers had formed around him with some trying to keep the nosey passengers who had heard the gunshot and spread the word at bay to prevent any unnecessary panic and the spread of unfounded rumors. There was even a big fat balding man with a thick moustache and a woman who looked a lot like a bat standing just beyond the boundaries posted by members of the crew. The cobalt hedgehog assumed that they were people Shadow knew since he was talking with both of them with an annoyed look written all over his face.

"I'm telling you father, I'm as fine as I could possibly be," he heard the ebon furred hedgehog assure the man for the tenth time since they first appeared at the scene. "The bullet barely managed to miss me by a few mere inches and instead struck and became stuck on the railing. You can see for yourself there if you don't believe me."

"I don't care Shadow!" the man who was the hedgehog's father responded with worry clearly laced through his voice as his moustache twitched in what seemed to be irritation a bit. "This is exactly the reason why I had enlisted the help of a bodyguard prior to boarding this ship. I wanted to make sure that nothing like this would happen to you. Could you believe all the heartache and trouble you'll cause me if you were to be mortally wounded by an assassin who's still hiding out on this ship as we speak?"

"Please try to calm down, Dr. Robotnik," he saw the bat say as she placed a comforting hand on the man's shoulder. "The important thing to think about now is that everything ended up as well as it could have been. Why, if Mephiles hadn't come to Shadow's aid when he did, who would've known what this blue poor excuse of a hedgehog might've done to him with the gun still his hands?

"I'm amazed how he still had the gall to stay here with the gun in his hand and not run off into hiding," she added as she turned to look at Sonic and shot him that reflected full disgust and complete abhorrence at the fact he was still in front of her eyes. "He must've known that trying to hide from us for a whole month on this ship would be a futile effort and decided to give up before the real hunt started."

"For the last time Rouge, Sonic is not the person who tried to shoot me earlier!" Shadow explained to the woman with a very aggravated sigh escaping his lips. "We were both sitting on the bench right over there listening to the propellers hitting the water a few minutes before deciding to walk over to the railing for no particular reason. It was less than a minute later after that when he pushed me to the ground and narrowly prevented either of us from getting a bullet in our backs."

"And why were you even talking to this Sonic character in the first place?" Dr. Robotnik asked as he shot said hedgehog a glare that reeked of suspicions. "Judging by the way he looks, I'd say that he's nothing but a simple third class passenger trying to find a better style of living on Mobius. I'm pretty sure that you have more important things to commit to than to strike up a senseless conversation with those of his kind."

"Hey, don't talk about me like I'm some kind of homeless animal on the street that's meant to be ignored!" the cobalt hedgehog growled out angrily as he tried to free himself from the restraints of the other man's hands. Unfortunately, this only caused him to feel more pressure be added to his already numbing wrists.

"I suggest that you hold still before anything worse than this befalls you," the man whispered into his ear quietly and full of threatening energy. "You do best to remember the situation you got yourself in. I can't guarantee your safety beyond this apprehension should you do anything that might pose a threat to any of our lives here."

"Is that supposed to be your definition of a threat?" the teen countered defiantly as he shot the man a cocky smirk that could have irritated even the coolest and calmest of people. "Funny, it sounded more like an attempt to score some points in the trust department with the people around us."

"Why, you arrogant little hedgehog!" he hissed out angrily as he further tightened his grip on the other's wrists, causing him to now hiss in pain at the pressure now painfully building up and creating the feeling that the vessels in his hands were going to burst. "You just wait until we formally charge you with attempted murder. You'll soon wish that you never talked back to me with such cheek."

"Stop this at once Mephiles!" Shadow shouted out angrily as he stomped towards the man and placed his hands tightly on one of the man's arms in an attempt to make him lessen his grip. "Not only are you hurting the wrong person; you're also apprehending the very person who managed to save my life. If I have told you all once before, then I've told you all a thousand times; Sonic never once tried to shoot me, much less try to lay a single finger on me, during the entire time I was talking with him. The only time he ever did so was when he threw me to the ground, in a valiant way if I might add, for the sake of safety."

"If I may be blunt sir, how can you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is the innocent party here?" Mephiles questioned as his voice regained that mysterious calmness the black hedgehog had grown to associate with him through their short meeting at dinner without lessening his grip on Sonic's poor wrists. "For all you know, this rogue could have set you up for this friendly scene so as that you could become an easy target for the gunman. I wouldn't be surprised if he was in cahoots with the assailant until the last minute where he had a change of heart in wanting you dead."

"And what exactly does that have to do with you seeing a gun in his hand when you all first got here? I already said that we were both not thinking very clearly for the few seconds after the shot, and he just picked it up without thinking. I saw it for myself, and I was barely in a stable enough mind to try warning him not to do so. If you're saying that is not the case, then you are calling me a liar. I do hope that isn't what you're insinuating."

"That's not what I am trying to allude to here. What I'm trying to say is that you should not go about trusting everybody on board this ship that you happen to strike up a seemingly harmless and peaceful conversation with. That's not how you would conduct your business on land when you're out walking down the street to the market, so there should be no exception to that rule on this ship when walking for a stroll above decks."

"Do you mind if I give you all my two cents on this crazy situation?" Sonic asked without trying to use a voice that would further aggravate Mephiles and cause him to further tighten his already terribly painful grip on his wrists. "Perhaps my side of this story will help you piece the real truth together when paired with Shadow's explanation. That and you never really gave me the chance to explain myself once during this whole thing."

"I'm starting to believe that it'll all go faster if we simply give you the chance to explain yourself," Dr. Robotnik responded with a weary sigh. "That and I suppose you do deserve the chance to reiterate your side of the story. I don't believe I need to tell you what would happen should you be caught lying to us, do I? My mood is already foul enough because of all this."

"Clear as crystal sir," the cobalt hedgehog responded as he thought he felt his wrists being lessened in pressure slightly. Either that, or they were now dead in terms of blood flow and he was just imagining it. "Shadow kind of forgot to say something to you guys about the few minutes before the whole shooting thing happened. It's true that we just met for a few minutes here under the thought of wanting to find somewhere to relax, but I was already here for a few minutes before he even came to this spot. So for the sake of this argument, where did he come from before stopping here on this part of the ship?"

"Well, I would assume that he came here right after leaving the diner hall," Rouge stated as she tried to recall the events leading up to before this entire incident. It was also clear through her facial expressions that she did not believe a word he was saying. "But he left dinner service forty-five minutes from now, and I think this shooting happened ten minutes ago. From what you both say happened, I can't help but wonder what happened for that unaccounted time. You could have easily figured out he was going to be coming here by tailing him and finding a way to cut him off in the process."

"How about I explain that part for you all?" Shadow suggested with a sigh as he valiantly came to Sonic's aid. "I have a feeling that this will help clear up any and all suspicions you have about Sonic. For the past thirty or so minutes before I came here, I was busy talking with another hedgehog called Silver. He should be somewhere inside the ship if you want to talk to him and have him ascertain that I was indeed with him during that space of time. I'm sure that you remember who he is father. He's the one who's right now scheduled to be engaged with Blaze when they both turn eighteen."

"Ah, he's the boy from the academy who you befriended and wanted to invite over for our family Christmas dinner a couple of years ago, wasn't he?" the doctor questioned as he clearly remembered the name mentioned. Even the bat had some reaction, although it was most likely to the name Blaze since it was the same name as the company she considered her rival and possibly enemy. "You never did tell me why he couldn't come over. I would have so liked to have gotten to know him better."

"You didn't allow me to have him over when I first suggested the idea to you," the ebon hedgehog responded with an aggravated sigh at how his father managed to slightly sidetrack them from the main argument at hand. "You said that we might have some family business to attend to and didn't want him to be around.

"Anyway, we're not talking about that right now. I only brought him up because he would be able to tell you that I was talking with him for about half an hour before coming here. It takes a couple of minutes to get here from where we were standing, and the route I took really makes it hard for anybody who wanted to tail me and kill me to play secret agent. Besides, there were also a good amount of people around me who would've seen Sonic following me if that was what he was really doing. And yes, some of the people I passed by were first class passengers like you and me."

"And they would've most likely told you about someone following you if they had really saw him," Mephiles finished off the explanation with a sort of thoughtfulness reflecting off of his words as he concentrated his blank stare at Sonic. "And I've been through the route you took to get here myself, so I know how open the area is. "As much as I hate to admit it, both of these boy's stories when put together make perfect sense. I highly doubt that Shadow would make up such a convincing story like this, especially after nearly being shot to death in such a fashion. With that said, I believe that I'm currently apprehending the wrong person here," he added as he finally let go of the blue hedgehog's wrists.

"Finally!" the teen exclaimed as he quickly moved away from the blackish purple furred hedgehog and rubbed his wrists tenderly in an attempt to get the blood flowing through them again. They now had dark red handprints on them and were borderline purple. "I thought that you were never going to be letting go of my hands anytime soon. I was starting to think that they would have to amputate my hands if they continued to lose their circulation."

"I'm sorry on behalf of my father and everyone else for the misunderstanding and inconvenience posed to you Sonic," Shadow apologized as he watched the other move even further to the back of the ship where they had been shot at earlier. It was almost as if he were a trapped animal trying to move as far away from its current threat as possible. "I hope that this does not put an irreparable rift between the two of us."

"Don't worry; I'm not the type of guy to keep a grudge against someone who really had nothing to do with the misunderstanding. And besides, I can kind of understand why your father and older sister would've thought I was the one who did it, being that I was here with a gun in my hand and all that good crap."

"How dare you talk about me like that?" Rouge exclaimed angrily as he glared daggers right through Sonic. "I am hardly Shadow's sister. I am his fiancée, you insolent little hedgehog. You do well to remember that next time."

"You're his fiancée?" Sonic exclaimed in surprised with bugged out eyes. The ebon hedgehog had to bite down on his bottom lip to keep himself from laughing out loud, but he could not stop the amused smile approaching his face. Thankfully, he was still facing the cobalt hedgehog so nobody else really saw that. "Uh, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding there madam. But I was sure that you were his older sister there."

"And don't you dare go calling me madam!" she added angrily as she began to stomp away angrily and disappeared through the crowd of people that had slowly started to now thin away. "I hope I don't have to see your sorry mug on this ship again for as long as I'm on here. This world would be a better place without people like you constantly defiling it."

"Miss Rouge, it's not safe to be travelling aboard this ship on your own," Mephiles called out to the bat as he began to chase after her. He then said to Dr. Robotnik as he passed by him, "I'll make sure that she gets to her quarters safely sir."

"I know you will Mephiles," the doctor responded with a nod as the dark colored hedgehog disappeared into the crowd a second later. He then directed his attention back to his son. "As for you Shadow, I want you to come back to our cabin. You've had enough excitement for one night."

"Just a moment father," the ebon hedgehog stated as he turned to face the man with a small scowl on his face. "What do you intend to do in an attempt to rectify the mistake of accusing Sonic for the attempted murder of me? We both already managed to show everybody that he wasn't the one who tried to kill me with the gun."

"Oh yes, I suppose apologies are in order." He then walked up to Sonic, who had soon stepped up a few steps before stopping when the man move, and extended a hand out towards him with something in it. "I'm sorry for causing you so much trouble. I hope that you will accept this with my sincerest apologies."

"What is this?" the teen asked as he took the item in his hand and held it towards the light source that was nearby. He soon figured out that it was a single money note, although the amount stated on it was more than he had ever seen on one piece of paper. It was labeled as a one hundred dollar bill, a bill that he had never had the luxury of having his hands on until now. "Are you seriously giving me this as a form of an apology?"

Shadow, who was watching his father's form of an apology with a shocked look on his face, quickly caught on to the somewhat offended tone echoing in Sonic's words. He was sure that he had never seen that much money held in one bill in his life, but he was more than sure that he was not going to be paid to forget that this entire ordeal ever happened. His suspicions on this was confirmed when he brought the money back into the portly man's hand and promptly rejected it.

"You can keep your money sir," the cobalt hedgehog responded with a hint of defiance in his tone, earning him a sharp look from the man. "There are some things in this world that can't simply be solved by giving away money to others. This just so happens to be one of those moments for me. Besides, having this much money on me would only make me into a potential target with other third class passengers on board this ship. I would like to avoid as much trouble as I can after this charade I was forced in."

"Were you honestly being serious about this father?" Shadow questioned in a form agreement with Sonic as he saw the man pocket the money back into his pocket. "You know that this mistake takes more than just money in order to be adequately forgiven. You almost ruined his life by trying to condemn him as an assassin."

"To keep the record clear son, Mephiles was the one who made the original claim when I came here after him. I would naturally believe what he said since he was the one with the hedgehog in his hands. How was I supposed to have known all the facts beforehand?"

"Well, you could've asked both me and Sonic for our side of the story before jumping to conclusions. And would you please start referring him to his name instead of just 'hedgehog'? Anyway, how about we do this instead?" the ebon teen added as he turned his attention back to the other hedgehog. "Sonic, how would you like to join us for dinner sometime this week? I'm not sure if you might have anything important to attend to, but I would like for you to attend as my way of saying sorry for what my family put you through."

"Oh, you don't have to go through all that trouble Shadow," Sonic responded as he barely managed to cover up his smirk with a regular smile upon seeing the shocked look the portly man was exuding when he heard the suggestion made. "You don't have to apologize for your parents on this. And besides, I'm only a guy that you just met for a few minutes before this whole thing happened. I don't really think I'd make a good dinner guest, especially since we hardly know anything about each other beyond our social standing."

"He's exactly right son!" Dr. Robotnik quickly agreed, his voice clearly sounding like he wanted to dissuade his son away from his suggestion. "Just because we've determined that he wasn't the one who attempted to take your life doesn't mean that we should be able to go about haphazardly trusting him. As he said, we hardly know anything about him that would merit this as a suitable chance to invite him for dinner."

"Well, I'm sure then that we can use this opportunity as an excuse to learn of a few more things about him. Every person, no matter who they are, has an interesting story to impart that is solely theirs to tell. And besides, didn't you say at one point before we came on board that you would like to see my talking skills be put to practice in case I end up having to conduct a business deal aboard this ship?"

"That is what I said, but this wasn't exactly what I had in mind. I was thinking that you and I could hold practice sessions so you would know what I would expect of you. However, if you are adamant on this decision of yours, then I suppose that I can do nothing but comply with your wishes. After all, you need to learn how to make your own decisions if you are to take over my company in Mobius in the near future."

"I'm glad that we found a way to agree on this father. Now Sonic," the teen stated as he fixed his gaze of the cobalt hedgehog once more, "will you accept my formal invitation for dinner sometime this week?"

"Well, I..." the cobalt hedgehog managed to stutter out before clamming up again because he was at a loss for words. He was not sure how to respond to such an offer being made to him. Even if it really was just an invitation to one of their dinner services sometime in the week, it was going to be dinner with a bunch of first class guys. He has only had dinner with one member of the first class for a good portion of his life, but that was a special case in and of itself. It was definitely nothing compared to this.

"Come on son, this is an offer that you made too sudden for the poor boy," the portly man stated as he began to move away from the two and back to wherever it is that he was planning on going to. "No one of such a stature would be able to make a decision on the fly as you are doing to him right now. Even I wouldn't be able to make such a key decision so quickly unless my life literally depended on it."

"I would gladly accept your generous invitation to dinner Shadow," Sonic answered after giving it a few seconds of thought. The man stopped in his tracks and quickly turned on his feet to look at the teen with slightly wide eyes. "Just tell me when it is you would like me to come and I'll be there."

"That's good to hear," Shadow responded with a smile and a nod of his head. He made it a point to ignore that piercing gaze he knew his father had lined up against his back and kept his eyes on the cobalt hedgehog. "How does two days from today at seven sounds? I hope that you won't be too busy then."

"It sounds like you got a pretty good idea planned out there," the teen answered with a similar smile on his face while trying to stifle down the laughter he felt coming on when he saw the man's facial expression. "I'm sure I'll have time then to come around. And if I don't, I'll find some way to work around it. And where is it that you would like for me to meet you? I don't really know where the place you have dinner is at."

"Hmm, I _suppose_ that you can meet with _us_ within the main foyer just before the entrance to the first class dining hall," the man responded with a sense of stubbornness in his words and a kind of resigned sigh before turning around once again to leave the scene. "I would suggest though that you make sure you wear something that is dinner-appropriate when you come. Wear something that would make you at least externally look like a member of the first class. I have a feeling I'll dread what I'll see on you," he added in a slight whisper before finally making himself scarce from the area.

"I'm sorry for how my dad acted there," the ebon teen apologized with a sigh and a small shake of his head. "I haven't really been giving him the best of times since he decided to have the both of us and my...fiancée move to Mobius. Then again, he had it coming to him since he didn't really talk to me about it first."

"It's alright Shadow; I'm pretty much used to it," Sonic responded as he simply waved it off with a shrug. By this time, the group that had gathered along with the crewmembers had left the area once they saw that everything had calmed down and the main event had come to pass. "I've had a lot of that kind of treatment while living on Robotropolis from even the second class people. I may not really look it, but I've lived on the streets for a good second half of my whole life, and everybody tends to look down on those poorer than them. Yeah, I look pretty good and healthy for such a poor living style, but believe me when I say that there are others who aren't as lucky as me to at least find one meal to eat every day."

"Wow, it sounds like you led a hard teenage life and lived to tell the tale. I've heard a lot of stories about the homeless problem on the news back home, and I say that you are one of the lucky ones to be able to even get at least one meal every day. I've heard of times when some only find food once every week or so."

"Now I'm just taking a wild guess here, but I don't think you managed to survive this well on your own for all that time," the black furred teen continued on as he tried to change the subject he started before it began to become awkward. After all, it was a sensitive subject, and he was not about to go testing out how sensitive it was with Sonic. "I don't mean any offense when I say this, but you don't strike me as a hedgehog who can take care of himself well in a life-or-death situation."

"Geez, I think I know who not to bring along with me if I ever decide to go on a camping trip or anything like that," the cobalt teen stated teasingly at the others inquiry while seemingly not to be phased by the other's mention about his poorness situation back on land. "Yeah, I had a friend helping me out. He was basically the moneymaker while I tried to get what I could whenever he couldn't get any. I was kind of the scavenger looking and sometimes begging for edible food when there was no money. That was definitely the lowest moment of my life when I had to swallow my pride and start begging."

"Any person regardless of their social class would rather die before they start begging. That just shows you truly have a will to live with a spirit that refuses to give up. Anyway, what did he do to help with the money problem? I can't imagine him being able to do a lot about it if he's the same age as you."

"Well, the only way for someone like him at age fifteen at the time to get money was to do it illegally. Thankfully, he picked up gambling saying that it was the lesser of all the other illegal activity he could've been doing. And don't you dare say anything about us not supposed to make money like that. You probably never lived on the streets with hardly anything for a whole day. I myself might not like to rely on money a lot, but it's basically the only way to insure your survival."

"I never said that I disapproved of your friend's methods of earning money. I normally don't condone illegal activity such as drug dealing and prostitution, but I find gambling to be quite harmless. And just between you and me, I've done a little bit of gambling with a couple of my classmates from time to time in the past."

"My, you're just full of surprises, aren't you? I figure out that you have a rebellious side underneath your first class face; you didn't like to constantly work your butt off while you were at school; and now you tell me that you gambled a few times. What else is there about you that I have yet to figure out?"

"Whatever it is that you feel you need to know about me will have to wait for another time. After this little episode, I don't think my dad would want for me to stay here any longer than I have to, especially since he doesn't really trust you. Speaking of which, I still don't understand why she reacted so terribly about you. Then again, I think she did say something about hating criminals a lot, and she does stick with whatever idea she gets in her head regardless of what others say."

"Sounds like you got an interesting life all planned out and ready for you," Sonic stated with a teasing laugh when he saw Shadow's look of disgust along with his arms crossed in a rebellious fashion. "Oh well, I suppose even my parents wouldn't want me to be hanging around alone with a strange guy after nearly getting a nice bullet hole in me. Before you go though, is it okay if I asked you one more question?"

"Provided that it doesn't end up taking more than two minutes to answer, go ahead and ask away," Shadow responded with a small shrug of his shoulders as he seemed to acknowledge the joke made earlier about his terrible future life.

"Why do you sound more formal when people like your father are around and a little bit less so when it's just with me?" the blue hedgehog asked with his inquiring gaze set on the other. "Now that I think back on it, you had a kind of formal way of talking when we first met, but you kicked it up a notch when talking with your father and his hired goon. I thought that you were to always talk formally regardless of who you were talking you."

"Well, you can count on that as a part of my rebellious side that you so easily managed to read," the ebon hedgehog simply replied with a small smile that clearly indicated that he was not going to say anything more about it. "That answer should be able to suffice your curiosity on that question."

"Hey, don't you go leaving me on one of those stupidly cryptic answers that don't make any sense at all! It annoys the hell out of me when people do that. And that sure doesn't help take away whatever curiosity you say I have on this."

"I'm sorry Sonic, but you're just going to have to learn to live with it this time around," Shadow answered with a small chuckle at his apparent victory at the situation as he began to make his way back to his cabin where his dad was no doubt waiting for him to return safely without any further incident. "If you really want to get a better answer than that, then you'll have to talk to me about it the next time we meet in private. Mind you though, I won't go delving to you about private things like this in front of my dad or Rouge, so don't even think about asking when we're at dinner."

"As if I would ever ask something like that in front of a whole bunch of strangers," Sonic scoffed at the other suggesting that he might do something like that. "I might seem like a dense guy at times, but I know when it is I shouldn't be asking people certain things. Although I must admit I can sometimes be oblivious to things like that because I can't see past the awesomeness that can only be me," he added with a cocky smile that the other could not see since he continued to walk away from the other.

"Is that so?" the other questioned with a smile clearly heard in his words as he stopped in his tracks for a small moment without turning around. "If that's the case, then my ever brilliant coolness factor is telling me that you're giving me a cocky grin behind my back. And don't try to deny it; I can practically feel it bouncing right off my back."

"Whoa, you really got me good there," the blue teen responded with a shocked chuckle escaping his lips. The other also gave out a small chuckle before continuing on his way. "Hope that you're as fun as you are now when we meet again."

"And I hope you don't let that ever enjoyable attitude of yours get you in trouble with my dad's hired guard, Mephiles, again. I hope to see you in two days Sonic. Remember; meet us in the main foyer on A Deck at seven."

"I've already committed it all to memory. You just make sure to remember to come get me. I'll look like an idiot just standing there if you stand me up."

The other simply laughed at that comment before finally disappearing around the corner, his footsteps against the wooden floors of the deck slowly receding away into nothing and being swallowed up by the subtle sounds of the churning ocean. Sonic then turned around and leaned back against the railing once more, wanting to let the events that had unfolded that night to reply itself once more so as to piece together any of the important facts he did not have time to register properly during those fast paced minutes.

_Boy, tonight sure was an interesting first night on this ship,_ he thought as he looked up at the sky and saw the stars shining brilliantly along with the full moon. _I never would've thought that I'd get myself caught up in an attempted murder case in my entire life. Oh well, at least it wasn't all for nothing. I ended up making a new friend through it. And he ain't just any new friend; he's actually a first class guy the same age as me and who seems to have that very rare rebellious side boiling away inside him. Oh, I can't wait to see the look on Knuckles's face when I tell him about tonight. He'd probably go off at me for getting myself caught up in some major trouble, but I'll shut him up when I tell him about Shadow._

And with a few more random thoughts running through his mind, the cobalt hedgehog continued with his stargazing for a couple more minutes. He soon grew tired of this leisure activity and decided to make his way back to his third class cabin where his red echidna buddy was surely waiting for him to come back.

* * *

Poor Sonic. Without even a chance to explain himself, he's already being pinned for the attempted murder of Shadow all because he was crazy enough to pick up the dropped gun. Thankfully for him, Shadow himself is willing to come to his defense despite only having known him for less than an hour.

As the title suggests, both of the teens have been accused of something at some point in the chapter; Sonic being of attempted murder and Shadow as a potential liar. And then Dr. Robotnik and Rouge end up misinterpreting Sonic himself, both of them already having painted a picture of him as some kind of street trash not worth their time talking to.

Oh well, I hope that you all ended up liking this chapter. Don't forget to leave a review before you go away. Until the next update everybody!


	10. The Next Morning

Hello everybody! Here's a new chapter to this story, one that's meant to wind down from the small action from the past chapters and seem more laid back. Hopefully, I managed to make it somewht funny and showcase how Knuckles and Sonic are friends despite the countless headaches they give each other.

And to the reviewer who posted concern about this story turning into a yaoi. I couldn't write a piece of yaoi even if my life depended on it. Its way to descriptive for me to write, and I prefer reading it rather than writing it out. However, it would most likely be a shonen-ai at this point. In case you don't know, shonen-ai is basically just showcasing two guys getting together and falling in love without all the crazy steamy descriptive stuff.

Anyway, with that out of the way now, I hope that you all end up liking this chapter. Please don't forget to leave a review after you're done reading. Until the next update everybody!

* * *

**Chapter 10: The Next Morning**

When the next morning finally came around, it was anything but the typical morning Sonic was used to waking up to. For a moment, he had forgotten that he was right now on board the Titanic and took a while to recognize his surroundings. As a result, he decided to sit up on his bed so he could get a better look at the room he was in. Unfortunately for him, he ended up roughly bonking his head against the ceiling with an audible sound, a welt surely starting to form almost immediately after the harsh contact.

"Aw, damn it!" he exclaimed painfully as he brought his hands up to his head in a reflexive action. He then released some pressure off of it and began to gingerly rub it so to help lower the swelling he felt building up. He then cursed again with a slight growl of pain in his voice, "Why the hell did they decide on making these top bunk beds so close to the damn ceiling? They're going to have a lawsuit on their hands the moment someone ends up getting a concussion because of this."

"It's nice to hear that you're awake now Sonic," the sound of Knuckles's voice was heard coming from the bathroom, although it was not in a tone you would expect from someone greeting you in the morning. It was then he noticed the tell-tale sound of running water, a clear indication that the echidna was right now taking a shower. "Hope you managed to sleep well last night, because I sure as hell didn't."

Instead of answering back, the hedgehog decided to lie back down on his bed and stare at the metal ceiling with a scowl on his face. The welt on his forehead was pounding away and making itself clearly known with its dull pain. He tried to ignore it by letting his mind wander around to various things; it soon rested on the shooting incident that had occurred last night. Before he could really mull over it in great detail though, he heard the shower stop running along with the sound of wet footsteps against the bathroom floor.

"Now that you're awake, do you think you could remind me again about what happened to you last night up on deck?" Knuckles asked as he exited the bathroom with a towel rubbing away at his red fur and quills. He did not have much of a chance to take one living on the streets of Robotropolis, so this was one luxury he was going to try and take advantage of as much as possible. That and he usually took morning showers if he had a hard time sleeping at night because of his thoughts keeping him awake. "It still hasn't quite really made its way into my mind in order for me to understand it."

"I thought I already explained everything about it to you last night," Sonic responded with an annoyed sigh as with questions about what was going on above decks. It was apparent that word had spread quickly throughout the ship about the shooting, and the red echidna was hoping the blue hedgehog would have some answers. Little did he know that he was actually at the center of said shooting, and he all but blew a gasket at the revelation and started going on a questionnaire rampage fueled by worry. "I really don't see much point in me repeating it and having you get all upset again."

Needless to say, it was a very long evening for both teens last night. It took the hedgehog a little more than four hours to get the poor echidna to finally calm down and try to get some sleep. And even with him in a somewhat calm state, he still kept tossing and turning, the worry apparently still fresh in his system. And one of the problems with the third class beds was that they were not only uncomfortable but also made noises through every small movement. That goes to say that poor Sonic barely got any sleep last night, and it was apparent that Knuckles did not either since he still held on to his grumpy demeanor seemingly multiplied by five from lack of adequate sleep. It was clear that this shower was an attempt to try and wash away both his weariness and the frustration that had built up because of it.

"Well, it's a pretty big point for me in you repeating it again, because I just can't make myself understand how it is that you managed to get yourself caught in such a big mess like that," Knuckles said with a slight growl to his words as he finished drying himself off before throwing the towel to the side in a haphazardly fashion. "It just doesn't make any sense to me how it could even be possible that you would get yourself caught up in a shooting under the thought of going out for a few minutes for a walk. If I'm ever going to figure this out, I need you to keep telling me everything you remember."

"Have you ever heard that anything can happen within a span of a couple of minutes no matter where you are?" Sonic simply answered with another question as he made his way to the bathroom still warm from the steam with the thought of taking a shower. If there was any kind of water that he was not anywhere remotely near being afraid of going near, it was regular old shower water. "That's pretty much what ended up happening to me this time around. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time talking with someone who happened to have same idea as me in terms of where to go to relax. It's nothing for you to keep on getting yourself so worked up over now that it's pasted with nothing really bad happening."

"And speaking of which, who was it that you said you ended up meeting on deck before all hell broke loose?" the echidna asked in a tone that showed he did not really believe what the other was saying. "You said that he was a first class passenger who really doesn't act so much like one, right?"

"I know that you don't believe me about that when I said it," the hedgehog replied as he turned on the water and tested it to make sure that there was still some hot water left from its previous run. Once he was satisfied with the temperature, he hopped in and allowed the water to soak through to his fur before taking the bar of soap and cleaning it out. "I didn't believe it either when he first told me. But I'm telling you the truth here; Shadow's not your typical first class teenager with a father who's a typical first class businessman who doesn't care about us third class people."

"If he's supposed to be a teenage in first class, then how come I've never heard of his name before? I'm sure that you remember that I was once a member of the first class before an onslaught of unfortunate events assaulted me and forced me to live like you. Don't get me wrong here; becoming a member of the third class was both a humbling and the best thing that's ever happened to me, especially since it I was going to be one with somebody who I already knew well through my father. As far as I knew during my first class life though, I was probably one of the few teenagers out of a million that you just described. To hear of another one like me but still in a first class position is rare if not impossible."

"And why does everything that you can't wrap your imagination around have to be considered impossible? You really have to learn how to be a bit more flexible on things like this. I've seen it first-hand for myself last night, so I know for a fact that it's more than possible to see a well-to-do first class teenager that kind of has the same attitude as you while still having a crap load of money on him."

"Well, it sounds even more unbelievable when you top it off by saying that he actually invited you to have dinner with him and his dad. How can you want me to be flexible after hearing something like that? First of all, how did he react when this Shadow said that; and secondly, just what is it that you're planning to wear to their dinner? You got to wear something formal if you're going to attend as a form of respect to them inviting you over. I doubt that a black bowtie would really work here because you have this natural aura that just screams third class to people."

"Jeez, thanks for telling me something that I already know Knux," Sonic answered sarcastically as he continued to wash out his fur of the grime and soap suds and began lathering some shampoo into the finer fur and quills on his head. Being that it was his own head he was working with, he knew how to maneuver around it without pricking his hands in the process and avoid inadvertently bleeding to death from repeated quill pokes. He also made sure to not handle the bump on his head he received from earlier roughly lest he wanted more pain. "I already kind of had it in mind to just wear my best and cleanest sweater that I have in my bag and hope that everything will go well. It's kind of the only thing that I can put on right now considering that I don't really have anything formal on me. Hell, I don't even remember ever owning something formal in my entire life."

"Oh, why couldn't they go and create a clothing store along with a souvenir shop on this ship for emergencies like this?" Knuckles was heard groaning as the cobalt hedgehog easily imagined him slapping his hand to his forehead in frustration. "If you're talking about that green sweater of yours with that ugly pattern on it that you've had with you for as long as I've known you, then go ahead and drown me to death in the bathroom shower. No offense to your uncle's sewing ability, but that thing is way too ugly to even be worn here inside the cabin away from the public view. And besides, you told me before that you hate wearing sweaters. You'd probably end up going crazy having to sit with it on for over an hour."

"I guess I'll just have to learn to live with it, although I'll admit that it'll be more than hard to do. And that's especially so since it's basically just as ugly as you described it. You know how much I hate having to wear any kind of clothing when I can be all nice and warm with just my fur and quills. It feels so unnaturally restrictive with the fur constantly being pushed uncomfortably against my skin, don't you think so? And for the record, I don't take offense at you bashing my Uncle Chuck's sewing abilities."

"Nice to know I'm able to get away with that. And don't forget that you're talking to an echidna who had to wear the said clothing I'm recommending at one time for a living because of his social status. I do have to admit, however, that some of the stuff I was to wear felt more than uncomfortable, especially the business suits. I still can't believe that I actually wanted to attend all of those stuffy events when I was little when I look back on it. Then again, just wearing a bowtie was more than enough to compensate for it; but as I said earlier, I don't think a bowtie would work for you. So it's either you change your attitude in the next two days so the bowtie will work, or we're stuck trying to figure out how to get a tux."

"Wow, it's nice to know that I'll be stuck with an imaginary tux that I don't even have with me," the cobalt hedgehog responded with a sigh before letting the water run through his quills and against his face, the shampoo bubbles running down his cheeks to his torso and legs before hitting the shower floor. "There has to be a way for us to get one around here without having to resort to stealing one. Do you think there's any chance that you might know somebody in first class on board this ship?"

"Oh sure, just wait here for a couple of minutes while I go out looking for some person that I know in first class and ask them to borrow one of their suits," the echidna replied with strong sarcasm in his voice that even a baby would have noticed it. "Do you honestly think that we'd be able to get out of this problem that easy Sonic? In case you don't remember me telling you so, I've been considered as dead in their world of money and status for a few years now. The only chance that one of them would even refer to me as the person I once was is if I meet one of my old friends, but what are the chances of me meeting one of them here? That's definitely a one in a million chance!"

"Hey, stranger things have happened before with other people in situations kind of like ours. I guess you could say this might end up being one of those crazy Twilight Zone moments. As long as the possibility's out there, there's a chance that you might end up finding a familiar face here on this ship."

"Yeah; and there's also a chance of this supposedly unsinkable floating piece of metal to go straight down to the bottom of the ocean sometime during this voyage," Knuckles countered with the same sharp tone of sarcasm that could easily cut right through someone if they were blades. "That would properly be something befitting one of those stupid science-fiction shows you like to watch every chance you get. If you think it's impossible for this ship to go sinking on us anytime soon, then it's definitely impossible for me to find someone I know on here and ask to borrow their suits."

"Alright, I got your message there Knuckles," Sonic said with a slight chuckle as he shut off the flow of water after making sure that all the soap suds had detached themselves from both his fur and quills. He then took the dry towel that was waiting for him to be used a safe distance away on a rack and began drying himself. He also heard the familiar sound of the television being turned on with the channel it was currently on giving off the annoying white noise when the station was out of service. "You don't need to start getting your quills all in a jumble explaining that to me. You don't want to go undoing what that nice warm shower you took earlier did for your attitude and temper, do you?"

While the blue hedgehog was busy drying off his fur and quills rather vigorously, he heard a knock coming from the door over the angry inaudible grumblings his buddy was currently spewing out. The volume on the television was heard being turned down, and the sound of footsteps walking across the room reached his ears. He had a feeling as to who it might have been at the door being that he and Knuckles only told one other person of where they were living, but he could not be sure until the other checked on who their visitor was. Thankfully, he did not have to wait too long for the answer.

"Hey Tails; it's good to see you again!" the echidna was heard saying happily after the sound of the door creaking open and closing soon after reached the hedgehog's ears and thus confirming his suspicions. "So what brings you over here to our part of the ship this morning? I was thinking that you'd probably want to go exploring the different floors and the deck a bit. You do kind of deserve some relaxing time to yourself after everything you've been through just to get on this ship."

"Yeah, that was kind of what I had planned for today," the voice of Tails responded, his voice reflecting the uncertainty and concern he was surely feeling right about now as the hedgehog imagined him with a half-smile on the young kit's face. "But I don't really think it's safe for me to go wandering about on this ship by myself. There might be a few people on board who still remember about my 'wanted' status back at Robotropolis and turn me in to one of the crew members for safekeeping."

"And why the heck would anybody want to do that to you on this ship?" Sonic asked as he exited the bathroom with the towel still rubbing away at his quills. The bump on his head had become slightly less painful after the shower, and he was able to touch it without too much pain shooting at him. He noticed in his peripheral vision that the television was showing off some commercial about a shampoo product, but he paid it little mind as he walked right passed it. "It doesn't really make much sense to be doing that, if you ask me. Who would actually go wasting their time on trying to catch a kid who's supposedly guilty of something when they can go looking for murderers and kidnappers?"

"Hey Sonic," the two tailed fox greeted the cobalt hedgehog with a wave of his hand from his spot seated on Knuckles's bed. He had probably deduced earlier that he was in the bathroom being that he was not in the same room and that it was the only other place he could have been in the small cabin. "Well, you know how some people like to act. They want to make sure that justice is taken care of and would do anything to keep a 'convicted criminal' off of the streets whether or not he's accused of a misdemeanor or murder. Call me being timid and kind of paranoid on this, but I don't want to be getting caught for something I didn't do and messing up after getting this far. And being that you two just happened to be here with me, I was wondering if you could go exploring with me."

"Well, with all the things that you said happened to you within the past couple of months, I can't really blame you for being a bit self-conscious about the people around you," Knuckles stated with a shrug of his shoulders before resting one of his hands in a comforting fashion on the young kitsune's. "Someone at your age shouldn't be subjected to all these adult problems and feel so vulnerable. And don't worry about asking us to join you; we'd be more than happy to. Isn't that right, Sonic?"

"Of course we'll go exploring the ship with you Tails!" the hedgehog teen exclaimed happily with a bright smile on his face as he walked over to the dresser and pulled out his white gloves resting on top of it. As he put them on with quick expertise, he added, "Knuckles and I didn't really have much of a chance to do it ourselves yesterday because we were too excited to be on board this ship."

"I think it was more like you were too excited to do anything then beyond just wanting to lounge away the whole afternoon on one of those folding chairs up on the deck," the red echidna clarified as he took his set of gloves that were lying on top of his bed next to his pillow. "And then you decided to do a bit of exploring on your own last night and nearly got yourself into deep trouble for that."

"I'm kind of afraid of what the answer might be, but just what exactly happened to you last night Sonic?" Tails inquired rather hesitantly with a raised eyebrow as he switched his gaze between the two teens.

"Oh, it wasn't really anything that you need to be too worried about," the blue hedgehog responded in a cool tone that was meant as an attempt to brush the subject aside. The last thing he wanted to do now was to discuss his near brush with death in incarceration to his best buddy who had a close encounter already with it himself. "It's something that happened to me and has already been resolved last night. Trust me; if it were something real serious, I don't think that I would be standing here talking with you right now."

"Yeah, I guess you're right about that. For a moment there, I thought you were talking about the shooting that happened last night up on deck that everybody was talking about and say that you were involved in that."

Instead of saying something to the young fox's statement, Knuckles simply let out a small chuckle that he did not bother trying to cover up. Sonic felt his cheeks heat up and felt a small blush starting to form from embarrassment at how the kid hit the bull's eye without knowing it. Tails simply looked at the two teens with a confused look on his face as he knew that he was clearly missing something here.

"Oh no," he soon murmured under his breath with an audible groan after he placed the pieces together in his head. He then said with one of his hands slapping his face, "Sonic, were you the one who was at the center of the whole shooting last night? Please tell me that for once my train of thought is completely off track."

"I thought I already told you that everything got resolved last night," Sonic responded with a slight nervousness in his tone without directly admitting that he was at the scene last night. "As I said earlier, would I really be here talking to you if I was shot? I'm sure that I'd be in the hospital room right about now."

"Then why are you sounding so nervous right now if that's all that really happened?" the fox asked as he easily picked up on the blue furred teen's tone. He may have been pretty young, but he was a pretty smart kid in that he was able to create so many new inventions and come up with the basis for them. Because of that, his mind is also sharper than others, and he was able to pick up on those subtle uncertainties, especially since they were coming from somebody who he considered to be one of his best friends. "You don't usually get nervous when you're caught trying to hide something. Did you do something to that first class guy people have been saying was with you at the time?"

"I hate to rain down on your friendly little chat, but could we talk about this some other time?" Knuckles asked as he made his way out of the room and away from the last conversation he wanted to hear right then. "I, for one, don't want to be hearing about this again. I've had my fill of aggravation and stress over this last night, and I don't want to ruin the rest of my day by reviving said aggression."

"For once, I fully agree with old Knucklehead here!" the cobalt hedgehog answered excitedly as he dashed out of the door that had just been opened by said echidna. This quick movement earned him a deep scowl from the short tempered teen as he fixed up his bangs that were sent askew by the slight breeze. "I might talk to you about it some other time; but for now, how about we go ahead and go on that tour of this ship that you said you wanted to take buddy? I'm sure that you just can't wait to see what the Titanic has in store for the next month that we'll be living here."

And before anybody could add anything to the conversation, the teen disappeared from the doorway and down the hallway. They could only presume that he was heading to the upper deck being that he had ran up the stairs, nearly forcing two third class couple coming down to trip up and fall down.

"It's nice to know that Sonic hasn't changed one bit since the last time I saw him," Tails simply said with a sigh escaping his mouth as he shook his head. "I would suppose that the both of you didn't really live too bad of a life if he's still able to be acting all perky."

"To be honest with you Tails, that blue hedgehog could probably be living the life of an on-and-off hooker and still not be phased by anything," Knuckles responded with a scowl, the fox giving off a scowl of his own at the echidna's poor choice of words. "And don't go giving me that look. You know exactly what I meant by that."

"But couldn't you have picked another example that sounded a lot more like something he'd be most likely to suffer through?" the young kitsune questioned with a strange look on his face as he walked past the red furred teen and out into the hallway. "You could've said that he'd still be all bright and happy even without having a single chili dog in his system for an entire month or something like that."

"Heh, it's funny that you should mention that," the teen said with a chuckle as he closed the door and made sure it was locked before stuffing the small key into his glove. "That actually happened to him six months ago. He was surviving well with all the other food we managed to find during our stay on the streets, but he always found some moment in time to go complaining about how chili dogs were a lot better than some disgusting tomato or a can of corn. God, you don't know how much I had to suffer through that."

"I'm sure I could only imagine. It's too bad that I couldn't be there to see it myself. I thought I was lucky enough to get a better life for the three of us with a new invention during that time. I never thought that I'd have to go into hiding for those six months and not be able to tell you two about what happened to me. If you want to talk about suffering, then go ahead and talk to me about it."

"Oh, I've had enough talk about suffering and all that crap on this ship to last me the entire damn trip. Now how about we go and catch up with Sonic before he ends up getting himself in more trouble? Knowing him, he always becomes a magnet for trouble after he's gotten his first taste of it."

"You've got that little faith in him wandering this ship alone, don't you?" the young fox asked with an amused giggle as he began to walk in the direction he last remembered the blue hedgehog to go. "Then again, he always was the one who would drag us into some kind of trouble back when we were in Robotropolis, so it can't be a stretch that he'd find more trouble for himself after last night."

"Well, then it's up to us to make sure he stays in line for the entirety of this trip," the red furred echidna responded as he followed his young friend towards the stairs and began to go up after him in search of the hedgehog that they both agreed to be troublesome.


	11. A Morning Breakfast Conversation

Hello everybody! Here comes a new chapter in this story after a week in the making. Actually, it was finished sometime two days ago, but I wasn't able to post it until tonight due to going crazy with my college work. Boy, it has only been work after work in terms of homework when it comes to their classes along with having to study notes taken through class in order to make sure that I'm ready for the quizzes they will give us. You'd have to be some kind of studying nut to keep up with all those classes and work that has to be done within a ten week period since I'm on a quarter schedule. Oh well, the best things in life are always the hardest to obtain.

If there's one thing you guys ever learn from me, make sure it's this. Never procrastinate for all your classes and wait two days before you have the class to work on your essays. Unless you're some person who seems to get some kind of high from the sense of urgency combined with the lack of time to finish, as I'm sure I am myself, and can finish under those conditions, never do that when in college. The chances of you having nothing to turn in and getting a low grade in the overall class is high, and grades are definitely everything in college. If you get a lot of bad ones, which I have thankfully have not, they won't allow you to continue to attend until you fix them up at _community_ college. Take this as some good advice for those who want to go to college.

Now that I have that public announcement out of the way and off my chest, I hope that all of you readers are enjoying how this story is turning out to be right now. I hope that I am posting the characters into the roles that they are supposed to be playing well enough while keeping close to their game persona. And if there is anything that seems OOC with them, too bad. This is a fan fiction for a reason, not some reproduction of a game.

Anyway, I hope that you will all enjoy this chapter as much as you enjoyed the whole of this story up until now. Don't forget to leave a review after you're done reading. Until the next chapter update everybody!

* * *

**Chapter 12: A Morning Breakfast Conversation**

"How are you enjoying your breakfast this morning Shadow?" Rouge asked her fiancé from across a table covered with a plain ivory white tablecloth with dishes both empty and filled with food resting on top. "I had the chef make it especially for you after your close run-in with death last night. I thought that it would be able to help you forget about it. That and I know how much you like freshly made waffles."

"It was the best breakfast I've had in a long time," the black hedgehog, who was sitting on an ornate wooden chair, simply responded with complete sincerity as he picked up a porcelain cup and took a sip of the warm tea that was in it. "I didn't expect that the morning meals would be just as good as last night's supper. I thank you Rouge for going through the trouble of having this morning meal made for me."

The two of them were currently on a rather isolated area of the ship that seemed to have been constructed to look a lot like a breakfast nook with partitions separating it into different sections. It was clear that it was mainly an area that was meant only for first class members due to the placement of a couple of maids standing by and ready to serve when they are called upon. It overlooked the ocean that was currently shining brightly with the morning sun halfway on its journey to its highest designated point in the sky with a roof over them to protect them from rain and exposure from the sun's rays.

The breakfast that they had just finished eating consisted of savory sausage links and a simple egg chive omelet as indicated by the remnants of food left behind on the plates and utensils. On another plate that was not quite empty of its contents was a fresh golden brown waffle with some fruit and whipped cream on it along with a small jar of pure maple syrup next to it. It was definitely a breakfast made and created beautifully by a first class chef, and it also clearly showed the effort that the woman took in making this breakfast as enjoyable as possible for the ebon furred hedgehog.

"I'm glad to hear that," the woman replied with a smile on her face as she went ahead and poured herself another cup of warm tea from a white and blue porcelain kettle that was resting on the center of the table. "Is there anything else that I can do for you this morning to make you feel more at home? I know that you haven't really been acting like yourself ever since we first discussed the move."

"This is just fine Rouge," the teen hedgehog simply responded with a tone of indifference as he took the last waffle from the plate along with the fruits that were resting at its side. His mind, however, was screaming at the woman to not remind him about the subject of moving that he now considered to be a taboo subject. "All I really wanted this morning was a nice warm breakfast anyhow, and I have a feeling that this was more than what I was expecting. I thought that it would be just some warm mediocre food that was placed neatly on the plate in an effort to look all fancy."

"Well, they did boasted to have employed only the greatest chefs in Robotropolis in order to create the food that they considered to be equal to a five-star restaurant when I first contacted the kitchen," she said with a smile that clearly showed she was more than pleased with this claim now proven to be a fact. "It's apparent that they have held true to their bold claim. Then again, I'm sure that you weren't expecting anything less than perfection for your first breakfast on this voyage, both in tastes and presentation aspects."

"To be quite honest, I was just expecting things to be as close to the way things used to be back at home. I'll admit that the food here is most likely better than what I've had before at home or at school, but that seems to be the only thing that has some semblance of improvement around here from the everyday."

"Speaking of which, how have you been faring ever since your close brush with death last night? I don't suspect that you would want to talk about it, but do know that I am here if you want to talk to somebody about it. Keeping all these stressful things to yourself isn't necessarily the healthiest things to do, you know?"

"I thank you for your concern regarding this, but I believe that I'm faring quite well with this incident. I have already since put it all behind me, although I am curious as to whom the person who tried to shoot me was. I would like to lay my eyes on him at least once before somebody goes ahead and takes him out."

"Please don't go about running on a wild goose chase on this ship looking for your potential killer. You're just going to be inviting more trouble to yourself if you do that. Who knows if he or she might have other weapons on them besides the gun they conveniently left behind? And besides, I still think that that blue hedgehog you were with then was an accomplice to the entire thing. He was probably setting you up the entire time by pretending to be all friendly with you so that you would let your guard down."

"For the last time Rouge, Sonic was not an accomplice to last night's incident apart from pushing me to the floor and saving me from a bullet," Shadow replied with clear annoyance in his voice as he continued to eat away at his waffle while piling up a piece of fruit with it every so often. Thanks to this, the pleasant breakfast mood changed to that of mild apprehension that was easily felt by the maids nearby. "I find it hard to see him as a person content enough to go ahead and commit something as heinous as murder. I was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time whereas he was there at the right time for my benefit. I do wish that you would stop suspecting him of having some role in this sick line of disdainful events."

"I'm sorry, but I honestly can't help it Shadow dear," Rouge admitted before taking a sip of her tea. If the black furred teen did not know any better, he swore he saw her give off a small smirk from behind the rim of her cup. "I can't help but to worry about you when you're on your own after last night's frightful episode. I mean, do you honestly believe the words of a simple third class boy when he would have something to gain in killing you?"

"And what, may I ask, could he possibly gain in wanting me to be killed?" the ebon teen questioned with a raised eyebrow as he finished off the last bite of his breakfast. "This is hardly the place to conduct a proper murder without getting caught. That and I can scarcely imagine a reason befitting for him to want me wiped away from this world."

"Well, you are the only son of Dr. Ivo Robotnik, a well-known man in the high strung world known as the stock exchange," she explained in a tone that sounded all official like her explanation was the only plausible one. "His stocks, despite having suffered a huge plunge because of the economic problems, are one of the highest and most profitable. In fact, a raise in his stock usually results in the lowering of all others. Consider if you will, that this hedgehog's family invested all of their money in a stock other than your father's. They're losing money even quicker than they could imagine, yet they don't want to pull away from it in case it ends up rebounding back to the gaining section. In order to try and cut their losses, they figure that they use what little money they have left in order to purchase a third class ticket and board this ship that they know you are going to be on for the next month."

"My, this is starting to turn into quite the fascinating story you're telling. No offense, but it seems to fit that of a bedtime story almost befitting for a child were not the part about potential murder were present. If that really were the case, which I highly believe it not to be, then what would happen if he succeeded in killing me? And this is only provided that if it really were is intention to begin with."

"I would think that you would already know what he would have to gain by risking his life to do this. Remember how I said that a heightened value of your father's has an adverse effect on others? Well, the converse would also hold true in this case. If his stocks were to fall due to any kind of circumstance, then the other stocks would see theirs rise to some degree with the competition seeing it's time of uncertainty."

"I still fail to see how my death, however unfortunate and saddening it would definitely be for you and my father, would have any kind of impact on my father's stock company. I don't have any official ties with his company yet until I'm of age, and that won't be happening for a little less than a year from today. I don't see how it would make sense to take out a person with no official ties with a business in hopes of recovering lost money."

"Ah, but since you are soon to be legally eighteen years old, those who are familiar with the both the business and your father's dream of passing it down to his next generation would know that you will be acquiring the leadership of the company soon. If you, the future owner of Dr. Robotnik's company, were to die due to murder or natural causes, stock prices would fall considerably since there are no other beneficiaries to allow the company to thrive through another generation. It would fall right past the deep red and straight to the darkest depths of debt hell in a heartbeat."

"...I suppose that scenario would make a lot of sense, considering if it were actually what was happening this time around," Shadow admitted after a small pause as an attempt to consider the possibility of what his fiancée just said. "Knowing father though, I'm sure that he'd be able to keep the company afloat regardless if I were alive or not. He always has a knack for making these great deals with the big corporate people."

"But do you really think those corporate people would want to do business with him when his stock company is slowly but surely falling past the red and into the darkest depths of debt?" Rouge countered with a raised eyebrow as she took another sip of her tea. "While some are providing some modicum of business with him, it's only because there is still a clear chance he can get out of his monetary troubles. However, if he continues to keep going down into the red, no company, no matter how reputable or rich they are, would want to help him recover his losses or even want to conduct some kind of business with him."

"And just what does this have to do with my chances at being murdered on board this ship?" the ebon hedgehog questioned as he visibly showed how tired he was with this pointless conversation that was bound to soon turn into an argument if the subject were not changed soon. "I would like to get this particular conversation over with as soon as possible. You've seemed to have managed to drift way off track from my main question and caught up with your explanation that turned into nothing but a convincing child's story."

"Don't you know that patience is always a good habit to have these days?" the woman responded with a small sigh. "Then again, I have been moving off topic a bit. With all this said, that hedgehog's family would most likely be able to cut their losses once your father's stock falls to unrecoverable levels, leaving all others the chance to grow. Don't you think that would be good enough motive for him to be an accomplice to murdering you?"

"Were this concerning someone else other than Sonic, I would completely agree with you. However, I already told you time and time again that he actually went the extra mile to push me to the ground when he could've just stayed right next to me and not bother rescuing me. What else could he possibly gain by saving and befriending me from the person he's supposed to be working with who wants me dead? I highly doubt that this other person would be happy that his plans got foiled by his own partner at the last minute."

"Shadow, I know that you are a very sharp and attentive man. You can see and construct plausible scenarios from these small yet revealing happenings that could convince even the most skeptical of people. It's that ability to foresee possible future scenarios that I fell in love with along with your good looks. However, don't you think that you're using all these scenarios so as to help defend this third class child? Not one of the few you've mentioned has any cause to place him as a murderous person."

"That's because there isn't one scenario that I can see where he would go and commit something like that. I've managed to talk with him for a few minutes both before and after the incident, and there was nothing in both his words and tone of voice that would indicate he was a person full of danger and not to be trusted."

"And what if he happened to be a master of misguidance and deception?" Rouge asked, her words and tone showing clearly that she was not going to be accepting any answer except for the one that she has already planted into her head. "If that is the case here, then wouldn't all of your scenarios painting him as an innocent person be reversed completely? Wouldn't they all show him off as a child with murderous intent on his mind of helping his parents regain their money lost through bad stock?"

"I'm sorry Rouge, but I'm starting to grow tired with this line of conversation," Shadow responded in a weary tone, hoping that it would have been enough to sway her away from talking further about Sonic and the events of last night. "This continuous talk of something we hardly know anything about is starting to become nothing short of mundane. How about we go ahead and move on to a different subject?"

"If that's what you so wish," the bat replied in a rather indifferent tone as she went ahead and poured herself another cup of tea. Once she finished doing so, she summoned one of the maids standing nearby with a small series of light claps. "Oh Amy, would you be a darling and fill this pot with some more fresh tea?"

"Certainly Ma'am," one of the maids, a pink hedgehog in a customary black and white outfit replied politely with a small curtsey before moving to take the pot off the table. Her green eyes shined brightly and complimented the equally bright smile she was showcasing to the two. "I'll have some more ready for you in a few minutes."

"And Cream, would you be so kind as to clear off the table?" she addressed the second maid that was also nearby, a small female rabbit with cream colored fur that seemed to be the source of her namesake. Floating right next to her like a pet bird was a small blue creature with a red bowtie that was almost as big as it making some kind of strange noise. Regardless if it was her best friend or her pet, it was clear that it was not going to be leaving her side for any reason whatsoever. That and it also seemed capable to help since it had a towel in its hands and at the ready to clean up any spill that might occur.

"Yes Miss Rouge," the young rabbit responded in a sharp tone that showed she was a relatively young girl, possibly even younger than the previous maid herself. "I'll make sure that this will be as clean as it can be for the next time you come for breakfast. Come on Cheese; we got to go and clean this table for these nice people."

The creature, whose name was now known to be Cheese, made some kind of happy sound before floating down over the table and start wiping it down the few spills with its towel. In the meantime, the young rabbit was picking up all the empty dishes and utensils, placing them on her arms in a rather expertly fashion. It was almost as though she has had much practice handling delicate dishes despite probably being too young for most to consider a maid able enough to handle certain daunting tasks.

"So what is it that you would like to talk about now Shadow?" Rouge asked while the two were busy cleaning the table just as Amy came back with a fresh steaming pot of tea. With a wave of her hand as thanks to the pink hedgehog, she said to her fiancé, "Is there anything of any particular interest that you would like us to speak of?"

"Uh, I-I don't know what to talk about," Shadow responded with a slight stutter as he helped Cream a bit with piling some of the dishes. He did seem a bit flustered in trying to find a topic, but he was really just pretending to not know what to talk about in hopes that she would get the hint and strop trying to strike up a pointless conversation with him. "You know that I'm not usually the type to go about starting conversations. Minus the events from last night, what is it that you would like to talk about?"

"My, you really do need to work on your conversational skills with people," the woman stated with a small chuckle, completely oblivious to the fact that he was pretending to have nothing interesting to talk about. "Well then, how about we talk about all the possible things that we'll be able to do together today? I don't think we've really had the time to discuss and put aside some time for just the two of us."

"I think I'll pass on that idea, thank you very much," the ebon furred teen responded rather bluntly as he watched the small creature clean up the last stain before hovering towards the rabbit as she went to put away the dirty dishes. "It doesn't really sound like something I'd be interested in talking about. What else do you think we could discuss?"

"Oh, you're being just as bad as you were yesterday. I was hoping that after having a good night's rest, you would be more open to be talking to me about things. Then again, no one really thought that last night's event's would've happened, so I suppose that you're still in some shock from it."

"I'm glad to see that we both agree on that accord. And please don't think for a second that I would be more open to talk to you about my private musings since we're going to be close to each other for the duration of this trip. If anything, this opportunity would only serve to help me strengthen myself against people who wish to pry into every single minute of my business and grant me no privacy in the process."

"Shadow, you know that I wouldn't do anything like that to you. I would gladly honor any kind of privacy that you so need and wish. All you need to do is tell me when you would need it and I won't bother you for a good while."

"I'm sorry to bother you, but is there anything else that you wished to be cleaned or done?" the voice of Cream chirped up, forcing the two out of their conversation momentarily. The sound and sight of Cheese was soon seen and heard as it hovered happily right next to her with a fresh towel in its hands.

"That's all for now Cream," Rouge responded as she looked at the small rabbit and gave her a kind smile. "I don't believe that we'll need your assistance anymore this morning. You're free to do whatever it is that you need to do."

"Thank you very much Ms. Rouge," the small rabbit thanked her before politely making her way out of the breakfast nook area and to wherever it was she was either needed or wanted to do before being called upon again.

"Isn't she just the sweetest little girl that you've ever seen Shadow?" she asked as she watched the child enter the ship with the small blue creature hovering close behind her. "I don't think I've ever seen somebody so young act so sophisticated before. And to think that she has a Chao beside her as a helper and quite possibly her companion. I never thought that I'd be able to see one of them myself being that they are so rare and all."

"Yeah, they are usually a timid bunch and don't like to make themselves known when there are people nearby," Shadow agreed with her as he seemed to be in thought at the subject. "From what I've learned about them, they generally live in secluded areas that are either hard for us to see or impossible to access without knowing beforehand where they're located. To lay eyes on one is just has hard as seeing an entire family or group in one spot; to have one as a companion is even rarer."

"My, it seems that you know quite a bit about them," the bat responded with intrigue ringing clear in her words. "Is this something that they had you study back at the academy along with how to run a business with proper work etiquette?"

"If you really must know, that was all something that I chose to study up on by myself without any push from the school," the ebon hedgehog replied bluntly as he got up from his chair. "It captivated me when I first heard of it, and I gathered quite an interest about them once I started learning more. I don't really think that it's something that you should be surprised in learning about me."

"Well, you never told me that you knew a good amount about them before now. I think that I'm entitled to be surprised to learn this about you. I myself have always wanted to learn more, but my busy schedule always impeded me from doing so."

"I'm sorry to hear that, but maybe you should try to take some vacation time for yourself so that you'd be able to study up on the things that interest you. Just being a person with a name behind a desk really isn't the most opportune life to be leading, you know? Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like to take a private morning walk on deck."

"Oh, that sounds like a good idea," Rouge spoke up quickly as she got up from her chair just as she saw the other begin to make his way towards the exit of the breakfast nook area. "So where is it that you're planning for us to walk around today? I've wanted to see what the entire deck looked like."

"Uh, I thought I said that I would like to take a _private_ walk on deck?" Shadow repeated as he emphasized a key word, hoping that his fiancée would get the hint. As an added precaution though, he chose to explain it to her in the shortest and sweetest way possible. "As much as I appreciate your eagerness in wanting to join me, I want to participate in this calming walk on my own this morning. I don't wish to have you accompany me this time around."

"But Shadow, do you really think that would be the safest thing for you to do after last night's scene?" the woman questioned with concern clear in her voice as she was clearly not going to forget the events of last night anytime soon. "I think that it would be safer if I went with you so we could avoid another mess like that."

"And what makes you think that would make any difference in another killer's mind whether or not you're with me?" the black hedgehog questioned, internally wondering if the bat was even using her head on occasions such as this. "If anything, he'd probably just end up killing you in the process so as to not leave any witnesses to the situation."

"I-I suppose you're right about that. But then what is it that you want me to do while you're out wandering around the decks again? How am I supposed to know whether or not you're going to be safe during your walk?"

"You know that I can take care of myself pretty well so long as there isn't a gun being pointed at me from somewhere far away. All you really can do is to not worry your health away about what might happen to me and worry more on what I am doing now. It's better than having to worry on something that you have no idea on what it is that might happen in the near future, don't you think so?"

"But it's not going to stop me from worrying about you completely," Rouge stated as Shadow started to make his way towards the door. "Are you sure you don't want me with you this morning?"

"I really don't feel like repeating myself anymore this morning," the teen simply responded with a shake of his head before placing his gloved hand on the doorknob. "How about you just go on ahead and spend some time with my father? I'm sure that he could use the company since I'm most likely not going to be giving him that pleasure myself for the duration of this trip. Now if you'll excuse me, I would like to take my walk now before lunch comes around."

"Shadow, wait!" the woman exclaimed in a last attempt to try and gain her fiancé's attention, but it fell on deaf ears as he opened the door and made his way to the deck. She then added to herself in a frustrated manner, "Oh, there are times when he could be as sweet as a button, and there are times when he could be too stubborn for his own good. This is definitely one of those times where he's too stubborn to even consider his own safety during something as simple as this."

With a small sigh leaving her lips, the woman sat back down on her chair, now alone with only a pot of tea on it and Amy the maid standing a few feet away from her. This was clearly not what she had planned out for this morning, but she did have to admit she was probably shooting a little too high in hoping things would pan out as she hoped. At least she managed to have a nice morning breakfast with him.

"Amy, do you mind bringing me a couple more waffles from the kitchen?" she suddenly asked the pink hedgehog who had responded when she heard her name being called. "I don't believe that I'm as full as I previously thought."

"Certainly Ma'am," the maid responded with a small curtsey before heading towards the kitchen to obtain what it was she was asked to bring. "I'll have them out and ready for you to eat in a couple of minutes."

"Thank you," the bat thanked the quickly retreating form of the maid before picking up her cup of tea and taking a small sip from it. She then used this time of quietness and loneliness to contemplate the things that were running through her head which concerned of things from her now defunct business all the way to how she was going to live with her future husband.


	12. Of Friends and Memories

Hello everybody! Here's a new chapter in this story. Just in case I didn't mentioned it sometime before, each of these chapters that switch off from Shadow's point of view to Sonic's and vice-versa happen right after. In other words, right after Shadow left the breakfast nook area in the last chapter, the event in this chapter is taking place. It's not one of those things where it's like "this was happening during this event". It's all flowing while switching from the two characters.

Now that that confusion is hopefully all cleared up, I hope that this would allow any of you who were wondering about this to follow the storyline a bit better. I also hope that you are all liking howthis story is starting to take shape. Please don't forget to leave a review after you're done reading.

And for those of you who are interested, I posted another Sonic Fanfiction called "Sonic Hedgehog Investigations". As the title suggests, it's a kind of mystery fiction involving the Sonic characters and in combination with another DS game. If you'd like to read it, there's the title for you to see. Hope to see some of you there and leaving some reviews on that one as well.

Now let's go ahead and start reading. Until the next update everybody!

* * *

**Chapter 12: Of Friends and Memories**

"Wow, being up here on the deck in the morning is almost just as good as being here at night," Sonic said excitedly as he was now back at the same spot where he and Shadow were shot at last night. He had just gotten there and was now leaning over the railing while Tails and Knuckles were just about to enter the area. "Just look at how that bright sun reflects off of the ocean and gives it a nice sort of sapphire gleam to it. It's almost as if you're standing right on top of one of the rare Chaos Emeralds, you know? I mean, have you ever seen anything more beautiful than the sea sparkling against the morning sun before?"

"Of course I have," the red echidna simply responded once he made it to the left side of the blue hedgehog; the young fox had taken residency to his right. "I see the most beautiful thing every morning when I look at myself through the mirror. This well-toned body isn't exactly the easiest to get or maintain on a daily basis, you know? In fact, I think I look better than some stupid piece of rare rock any day."

"You know that wasn't what I was referring to Knucklehead," the cobalt hedgehog responded with a somewhat sour glance at his buddy for that smart remark. "Then again, I should've suspected that you would come up with an answer as stupid as that. How about you Tails? What do you think about this?"

"Well, I guess it looks kind of like the sapphire Chaos Emerald," the young fox simply responded with a small shrug of his shoulders as he stared out at the long expanse of sea and sky. "I never really had much of a chance to see much of anything since I was either too young to remember or on the run from officials. But I guess this could definitely beat any of the greatest inventions I could ever see or make."

"Oh, does everything have to be compared with inventions and machines with you?" the hedgehog questioned with a small chuckle leaving the back of his throat as he gave a brotherly pat on the head to the younger. "I guess what you said is kind of true though. You and I met in the streets only three years ago when you were having trouble trying to find somewhere to spend the night. I think it was raining that day and you were trying to use a cardboard box to keep yourself from getting soaked."

"That was the only thing I could find at the time apart from a heavy piece of metal that I couldn't even lift off of the ground. I might have been a homeless for as long as I could remember, but that doesn't mean that I know every single thing about surviving on my own out in the streets."

"It sure sounds like we found you there just in time before things ended up getting even more out of hand," Knuckles said with his arms crossed as he thought back to that very moment they were discussing. "I think my family had just lost their business and tried their hand at getting a new life then. You weren't the only one in the dark then about this whole poor business, you know?"

"Hey, you're starting to make it sound like I've been poor for the whole of my sad little life," Sonic responded with a teasing scowl at the red furred echidna who only gave him a small smirk in return. "My Uncle Chuck was still alive and kicking then while working at the ship harbor as the person who makes sure that nothing illegal gets smuggled on or off those docked ships. I lived a pretty good life myself at the time with a roof over my head and a warm bed to call my own."

"Yeah, I'm sure you did there Sonic," the echidna simply said in a tone that was both teasing and seemingly suggesting something else. "I'm sure that you were living the high life with all those bribes your uncle got from those guys who wanted to make sure he kept quiet about all their illegal activity and all that other good crap."

"Now you know that wasn't what happened with his job," the cobalt hedgehog responded in a surprisingly calm tone despite just hearing his uncle get badmouthed by his good friend. Then again, he knew that the other was simply attempting at making a joke in his own sick little way, so it was not much of a surprise for him to be so calm. "You know that I could be saying the same exact thing with your parents and their business before it went belly-up."

"Of course I know that. I also know that you're not capable of doing something like that because you're too laid back and cool for that kind of stuff. I, on the other hand, am cool on a totally different level than you," he added with his arms crossed and a defiantly cocky smirk planted on his face.

"You two just love arguing with each other, don't you?" Tails responded with a sigh as he butted in between the two teens' conversation that was clearly going nowhere. He had been leaning against the railing and listening to the two go at it the entire time without saying anything. "I swear, I think this was how I left you two when we last met. If I honestly didn't know who you two were, I would've guessed that you were brothers."

"Hey, being that we practically knew each other since we were little because his uncle worked closely with my dad, we might as well be brothers. I'll bet you anything that there isn't anybody on this planet that's alive who knows just as much about Sonic than I do."

"Too bad you didn't really bet anything there, because I know just as much about him as you do," the young fox said with a small smile as he gave the blue hedgehog a friendly pat on the back. "I know that he likes to pretend nothing bad is happening around him at time while acting all nonchalant and stuff. He pays more attention than we give him credit for, although his laidback attitude kind of offsets that hidden talent of his."

"And what hidden talents are you talking about little buddy?" Sonic questioned with a raised eyebrow as he fixed his gaze on the two tailed fox. "There isn't any talent to me paying attention to more than I like to let other people let on. I just don't like stating the obvious and all that other good stuff that people tend to do."

"Sure you do," Knuckles answered with a sarcastic tone in his words. "What are you going to tell us next? Are you going to say that you hate chili dogs so much and that you'd love to go have a nice long swim in the ocean?"

"You could've just said that you didn't believe me instead of going on one of your stupid sarcastic raves, you know?" the cobalt hedgehog replied with an annoyed raise of his eyebrows at the red furred echidna before diverting his gaze back onto the sparkling ocean in front of him. "Oh well, at least this spectacular view sure offsets your sour mood this morning."

"Heh, only you could change topics so casually as if what we were talking about was no big deal Sonic," the echidna simply stated with a shake of his head before turning his own gaze to the spectacular view in front of him. That action was short-lived, however, when he heard somebody coming from behind them.

"I figured that voice belonged to you Knuckles," the person that was behind them said, causing all three of them to turn and see who was talking to them. "There's nobody else in this world that I know of who would say something with such sarcasm while putting a lot of what you liked to call brotherly love into it."

When they saw who it was that had come unannounced and spoken to them, two of them were confused as to why this hedgehog with silver fur and a black bowtie on him would want to add on to their conversation. It was clear that he was a first class man, so there shouldn't be any reason as to why he would want to strike up a conversation with them. However, only Knuckles seemed to have an expression different from confusion as his face clearly showed.

"Long time no see Knuckles," the silver hedgehog greeted the echidna with a smile on his face, his yellow eyes fixed solely on the teen while his peripheral vision kept watch on the other two beside him. "I didn't think I'd get to see you again after your dad's company caved in on itself."

"S-Silver?" Knuckles replied dumbly as his facial expression, however funny it was for both Sonic and Tails to see, said more than any of his words could have said. The cobalt hedgehog even snickered a little bit at seeing his buddy act so speechless for the first time since he had known him. "Is that really you?"

"Well, who else do you know who happens to have silver fur and one-of-a-kind golden yellow eyes like mines?" the other responded with a sort of humor that sounded almost like the red echidna's. "It doesn't sound like a question somebody like you would be asking. If anything, it should be me who should be acting shocked, not the other way around."

"Knuckles; who is this guy?" Sonic asked, feeling that he was not going to be getting his answer anytime soon if he did not somehow steer the conversation towards introductions. "I'm sure you know something about him being that you're acting all spacy right now in front of him. Is he an old friend of yours back in your days of living the rich life?"

"And I'm guessing that your name's Sonic, right?" the other hedgehog stated more than asked as he focused his full attention at the cobalt hedgehog. This time, it was his turn to look dumbstruck as he tried to figure out how this person knew his name. "Knuckles here told me a lot about you a long time ago when he was still a first class kid. I guess he was right in saying that you were quite a blunt person."

"Uh, guys, this is Silver," the red furred echidna said after a couple more seconds of silence before he regained a bit of his regular composure. "He's someone I grew up with at school. And no, it wasn't one of those rich schools that you know most of us rich guys going to. I'm talking about when we were around ten years old and just going to the normal everyday schools."

"Well, it's nice to meet you Silver," Tails responded politely as he walked up to the silver furred hedgehog and brought his hand out in a signal for a handshake. "My name's Tails. I didn't know that Knuckles knew someone like you."

"Uh oh, sounds like somebody was desperate to go hiding their tracks after becoming third class," Silver said in a teasing tone as he nudged at the echidna's ribs. "You didn't even go about introducing me, your only good friend from so long ago, to your other friends?"

"Silver, you know that I don't like to talk about the past like some old woman," Knuckles responded with a weird look on his face directed at the other. This earned a chuckle from both Sonic and Tails when they saw the guy being teased.

"Sounds like there's somebody else out here who knows all your annoying habits and stuff," the cobalt hedgehog teased as he placed his hands on the other's shoulders from behind. "You really are easy to read like a book, aren't you?"

"Oh, put a cork in it Sonic!" the echidna growled out before turning his attention fully to the first class teen in front of him. "It's been so long since I last saw you Silver. Just what is it that you've been up to lately?"

"Nothing much worth saying," the silver furred hedgehog simply answered with a shrug of his shoulders. "My parents are practically the same as you remember them, all laid back and all about being charitable. I'm just glad that they didn't get too affected by the Robotropolis money meltdown that has everybody moving away from there. Don't get me wrong; I'm still living with them, but I'm kind of working for another company now."

"Uh, do you two mind leaving us alone for a little bit?" Knuckles asked as he looked at his two friends and indicated for them to move away with his eyes. "I would like some time to catch up with Silver here if you don't mind."

"And just why can't you do that with us around?" Sonic asked with a raised eyebrow as he got himself off of his buddy. "Wouldn't just be the same thing if we were here? You're just going to be talking aren't you? Or are you telling me that you two want to have a welcome back kiss and are too shy to do it in front of us?"

"In your dreams, you hormonal hedgehog! You better get yourself out of here before I decide to pop you one upside the head. Don't think that I'm not capable of doing that to you. I can and I will!"

"Alright, alright! I'm going now, okay?" the hedgehog said defensively with a joking smile as he quickly backed up from the hot-headed teen and towards another area further down from where they were. "Geez, couldn't you learn how to take a joke every now and then? You'll get yourself a heart attack with all that stress."

"Eh heh, sorry about Sonic's behavior there," the small fox apologized with a sort of shy smile as he moved to catch up with his cobalt buddy. "He kind of likes to joke around with his friends a lot. You learn to know that it's all just a bunch of harmless fun to him once you get to know him though."

"I'm really sorry that you had to watch that embarrassing scene," the echidna apologized to Silver with a small sigh and a shaking of his head. "Sonic never could know when he's supposed to act serious. I really see him as one of my best friends, but he can sometimes really embarrass me more than he could to himself."

"Oh, I've no problem with it," Silver stated as he chuckled away the previous scene. He then added once he was sure the other two were out of earshot, "If I remember correctly, I was kind of like that back at elementary school around you. You always threatened to stop being my friend, and I always kept up with those antics."

"Oh, don't remind me about you back then," the teen responded with a slight bite in his words, but he could not resist the small smile approaching his lips. "You practically made me a part of the laughing stock of our class. I don't think I really felt that embarrassed before in my life."

"Yet I also think that I haven't seen you having so much fun before," the silver furred hedgehog stated with a chuckle as he thought back to the memory of them as little kids. "Oh, what I wouldn't do to go back to those times just once more. I don't think I've ever been happier than I was then. Um, let me take that back. I do remember being happier than when we were playing as kids."

"Wait a minute. Just what are you leading up to here? Every time you try to correct yourself like that, you usually have something better to replace it with. Come on, spit it out already! What are you hiding from me?"

"Are you really going to be interrogating me right after we met after being apart for so long? You really haven't changed a bit, have you? I guess I just can't keep anything away from you for long. Well, you know that I'm right now seventeen, right?"

"Of course I remember that. And if I remember correctly, your birthday's in just a few more months. What's so special about it?"

"Well, whether we're in Robotropolis or in Mobius, you know that a marriage can only be legally officiated when both couples are eighteen. Despite that, I've already found somebody to marry and got both my and her parents' blessings."

"What? Are you being serious with me here? Are you telling me that you're going to be married in a few months?"

"Funny, I didn't know that there was an echo machine somewhere onboard this ship," Silver teased as he chuckled a bit at Knuckles's disbelief. "Yes, there are plans on me getting married with a woman named Blaze. She's just one year older than me, yet she can hold up her end of the bargain when it comes to businesses. I'm not sure if you heard, but her father's suffering from a heart condition. Thankfully, he won't be leaving us anytime soon, but he's been bedridden since then. She was allowed to take over the business while I took over the second highest position, a sales representative travelling to different countries to advertise our merchandise."

"Wow, it sure sounds like you're living the life you always told me you dreamed of when we were little," Knuckles said after the other was done explaining the accomplishments he managed to set for himself despite not even legally being a man yet. "I always knew that you had something special in you."

"Hey, don't go about selling yourself short," the silver furred hedgehog responded with a raise of his eyebrows. "If I remember right, you had a set of dreams that you wanted to get taken off the ground. You said that you wanted to teach people martial arts and was teaching yourself all the moves that you could do? Did you end up giving up on that after losing your status or something like that?"

"Are you kidding me?" the echidna questioned with a scoff as he shook his head in disagreement. "Since when have you known me to give up on anything that I've got my mind set on? I never gave up on teaching myself those moves. In fact, I think it's safe to say that I'm pretty damn good with the stuff now? You want a demonstration?"

"As long as you don't end up destroying the benches and other stuff here on the deck, then go ahead. I don't want to become partly responsible for replacing these potentially expensive stuff because of your recklessness."

"Ha, if you wanted reckless, then you should've asked Sonic to show off some stuff for you," the red furred teen stated before he moved onto a spot near them that was clear of any kind of distractions and objects. He noticed that Sonic and Tails have been watching them from the other side of the ship, but he knew that they could not hear them. And besides, he wanted to show off his stuff to his other friends as well.

As he stood still at the center of the clearing, the teen took a deep breath of the fresh sea air, thinking of what it was he was going to do for the next couple of minutes. After he let the breath out, he paused for another second or two before he started moving. Amazingly, he was moving faster than probably even the fastest runner in the world could while occupying such a small amount of space. He made a variety of punches and kicks meshed together to create stylish and damaging moves that would definitely injure some unsuspecting sap. He even knew how to jump probably a good couple feet into the air and perform regular, double, and dizzying spinning kicks while aloft. It was clear that he had spent a lot of time practicing all of this in order to have made everything look so flawless and professional.

"Whoa, I never seen Knuckles do all those fancy moves before," Sonic whispered under his breath in awe as he continued to stare at the show the echidna was putting up. Amazingly enough, none of the passengers came around to where they were and saw what it was that was happening here. It was almost as if this moment was reserved especially for these four. "I knew he was good at that stuff, but never that good. The most he ever taught me was how to pull some fast punches and combine them with basic kicks."

"He probably only taught you that much because you started to get impatient and whiny about the whole thing," Tails responded as he easily saw in his mind the hedgehog doing that. "But you are right. I've only heard you tell me he knew how to perform martial arts. To actually see him do it is almost like having a rare treat."

"Well, he never really had an opportunity to go flaunting his talent back at Robotropolis, and I'm guessing he just couldn't help but to show off to this Silver guy," the cobalt furred teen said with a smile on his lips. "I guess those two really are long-lost friends. You know that Knucklehead would never do all this stuff in front of just anybody."

After another minute of performing random moves into smoothly flowing combos and having his friends watch him, Knuckles finally planted both feet firmly to the ground and stopped everything. Despite having moved nonstop in such a fashion that any non-martial artist would call sporadic and possibly idiotic, he did not seem to be out of breath; in fact, he still looked as if he were breathing normally from before he even began the workout session! It was almost as if he were a robot that did not require any amount of air whatsoever in order to perform such strenuous tasks.

"Wow, that certainly looks a lot better than what you were trying all those years ago," Silver said with awe clear in every word he said. "You could barely even make some of the punches work along with those pitiful swish of your legs you called kicks. You did get better after a week of practice, but I never saw you being as good as you were now. You're definitely a natural when it comes to this."

"Ain't that the truth?" the echidna stated as he rubbed the under of his nose in a cocky and proud fashion. "My parents might have had to sell everything just so that they could try and scavenge a living after losing their business back then, but I made sure I hid a few of my martial arts books before they had a chance to get their hands on them. I've been practicing as much as I could ever since past midnight in the park until gangs started to call it their own turf. I may be hotheaded, but I'm not stupid enough to pick a fight with notorious gang members."

"Speaking of your parents, I got something that I have to tell you about them," the hedgehog asked with a small smile. "Don't worry, it's nothing serious. It's more of a message than anything else."

"Oh, for a moment there, I thought that you were going to say something bad happened to them," the red furred teen stated with a sigh of relief when he first heard the other say something about them. "Don't go about scaring me like that."

"They told me to give you this if I ever ran into you during my travels," he said in a serious tone as he pulled something out of his glove and handed it to the other. It was an envelope that was folded twice so that it could rest easily inside the glove. "They had no idea where you went after you told them you were going to live with Sonic shortly after they moved into my place and then hearing his uncle dying soon after. They figured I was their best bet at running into you. They're worried about you, you know? Hell, even I was worried about you for these past few years."

"I'm sorry for making you guys all worry about me. I wanted to try my hand at living on my own without my parents having to worry over everything I do. That and Sonic had just lost his uncle. I knew he wasn't going to be considering living with you anytime soon, and I wasn't going to go abandon him in his time of need, so I did the next best thing. I stayed with him all these years and made sure that he had a chance to survive on his own. It may have not what I had planned as living away from my parents, but it was still an experience that I would happily do all over again if I were given a choice."

"That's what I thought happened to you, but I just wasn't sure this whole time. You promised me that you would've came back if things got too hairy; and I know that you aren't the type of guy to go back on your promises. So you lived on the streets this whole time trying to make sure Sonic didn't do anything stupid."

"Ever the observant one, are you? You always knew how to get things right to the point. And speaking of points, do you think you can do me a favor?" Knuckles asked as he seemingly remembered something and shot a quick glance at Sonic who had since lost interest in him and continued to look out at the ocean along with Tails.

"Well, it kind of depends on what the favor is," Silver said with an eyebrow raised in an inquiry. "I am surprised, however, that you're even asking me a favor to begin with. Unless living on the streets changed your mind a bit, you never really liked asking for those from others."

"Trust me; living as a homeless hasn't warped my normal way of thinking. What I'm really doing is asking a favor in Sonic's place. You see, he rescued some first class guy around his age from being shot at last night."

"Are we talking about the same incident that's been going around the entire ship like wildfire?"

"The same exact one. It seems that the guy he rescued felt in debt to him and invited him over for dinner tomorrow night. Not only does he have nothing suitable to wear to their dinner; he doesn't really have the attitude needed to hold a proper conversation without angering someone. I was kind of hoping if you'd be able to lend him one of your suits and give him some etiquette 101 lessons. I would if I could teach him that myself, but I'm kind of out of practice after not using it for so long."

"I guess I could do something along the lines of that for him," the silver furred hedgehog said as he looked over Sonic from afar as if sizing him up. "He looks as though he'd be able to fit nicely in one of my rarely used suits. Have you ever considered him just wearing a bowtie though?"

"Do you honestly think that rascal can pull off the gentleman act with only a bowtie on him?" the red echidna questioned with a what-the-heck look on his face. "You're able to pull it off because you've had lots of practice with properness. He's never had that kind of practice, so any first class person worth their salt would be able to see through the bowtie."

"I suppose you're right on that. After all, you are the one who knows him the best. I'll go look through my clothes as soon as I can and let you know if I find anything suitable. Just tell me where you're crashing on this ship and I'll try to come by sometime later this afternoon. Does that sound good to you?"

"It sounds perfect. Thanks for helping me out here."

"Not a problem. Something tells me that I'll have to get back to my place now if I want to find something nice and come over to teach Sonic some proper table manners. Those things take more than just one day of practice to at least get the basics down, so I'll have to start teaching him today and tomorrow."

"Alright, I'll see you later," Knuckles said as he watched the silver furred hedgehog walk away and presumably back towards his quarters. "Just make sure you don't forget about it or I'll kill you for it."

"My, aren't we starting to get a bit violent this morning," Sonic called out from the other side as he glanced at the echidna and saw that he was now alone. He took this as a cue to now be able to be next to him and dragged Tails along.

"I'm only cranky right now," the red furred teen corrected with a small scowl towards the blue hedgehog. "And I'm only like this because I just finished managing to find you a suit for your dinner tomorrow night."

"Alright, you're really a lifesaver Knuckles!" the teen exclaimed happily as he gave a big hug to the other who only rolled his eyes at the action. The fox nearby simply watched with a small smile and a chuckle leaving his throat. "I knew that you had a chance of knowing somebody on board this ship. And here you were telling me that you had no chance of having that happen to you."

"I doubt that you'd be this clingy after I tell you what you'll have to do today and tomorrow just to get ready for that dinner. Besides convincing Silver to put a suit on loan for you, I asked him to teach you some things about participating in a first class dinner. This also means you'll have to learn how to act all formal and all that."

"You want me to do what?" the hedgehog exclaimed, this time out of surprise as he released his grip on the other and backed up a bit. "Why the hell would I have to learn all that formal crap on top of having to wear some stuffy ass suit?"

"Because I'm sure that you don't want to get yourself kicked out because you don't know what to say when to say it. I expect you to listen to him when he teaches you or I'll make sure your entire trip on here is nothing but a living hell. Don't even think about making a fool out of me in front of him. And just to make sure you know that I'm serious about it, I'll be watching you closely, so don't even think about it."

"Uh, I got it sir," the blue hedgehog answered with a mock salute to the other while his face showed that he understood the other was dead serious about it. He may have liked to have messed around with the other teen, but even he knew when to stop pushing his buttons lest he really wanted to be on the receiving end of a beating. "I'll make sure to be on my best behavior when your buddy comes over."

"That's good, my untamed little friend," Knuckles stated happily in a playful tone when he added the last part about being untamed. "Now how about we go ahead and get some lunch now before we go back to our room? We've already been out here all morning. Would you like to join us Tails?"

"You don't even need to ask if I'd like to come Knuckles," Tails answered with a smile as he followed Knuckles to the dining area for some food. Sonic, on the other hand, was still standing where his feet were planted as he allowed his mind to mull over what he heard the past few minutes. "You know that I'd never be too busy to pass up any chance to have a good meal with my friends."

_Do I really have to torture myself with all this stuff about wearing suits and learning proper first class dinner manners?_ he thought to himself as he finally got his legs working and tailed the two in front of him. _Oh well, I guess it's something that can't be avoided. Shadow seems like a pretty good guy, and I don't want to sound like a stupid person for saying I'll be there and end up embarrassing myself. I guess even a laid back guy like myself with close to nothing to lose has to sacrifice something just to make a good first impression._


	13. Prepping for a First Class Dinner

Hello everybody! Boy, it's almost been an entire year since I've updated this story. I honestly completely forgotten about this when I started my summer job last year. Put that on top of the summer college courses I decided to take and that provides a lot of stuff on my mind. That and other story ideas always popped into my head whenever I manage to have some semblance of free time to myself. And it's with all this in mind that I apologize to all of you who have been faithfully waiting to see the next update to this story for my long hiatus moment on this accord.

Now that this is all out of the way, I hope that you all find this new chapter just as good as the others. In fact, I hope that you might find it better than some of the other chapters now that my grammar is different and better than it was year ago. After all, they always say that practice makes perfect. I just hope that it reflects in this chapter and makes it all the more appealing to you.

To be honest, there's a specific reason why I had suddenly just remembered about this story. You see, yesterday happened to be the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, the main place of where this story is taking place. For those of you here in America, you might have known that they were showing a four-part series titled "Titanic" on the television. Needless to say that it reminded me of this story after captivating me in the story, fictional or not, of the passengers who lived their lives as normal as they could in a class-differentiated society before watching one of the worst calamities unfolding all around them. And I know that it's just a show, but the sight of the ship actually rising into the air straight up and slowly sinking was nonetheless a breathtakingly scary sight to behold. I can only imagine who both those on the ship and the rescue boats had felt then watching the horror.

...Anyway, that's enough of my ranting on everything. The point here is that I put out a new chapter for you all to read. I hope you all really enjoy it. Please don't forget to leave a review before you leave to the next story that you want to read. I always read them and take into consideration any and all suggestions and corrections that you put on there. And if you all have the time, please go ahead and read some of my other stories, especially my other sonic fanfiction called "Sonic Hedgehog Investigations" if you never heard of it. It's a mystery style and has a lot of talking in it, but you might like the mysterious air I put into it. You could also play along with the mystery instead of just reading through it. You'll have to look at the format in order to understand what I mean. And don't pay attention to how bad the first case might be; I promise you that the others after that are a lot better and more attention-grabbing.

Until the next update on this or any of my other stories everybody! And I promise to try and not take as long to update this story, although don't expect to see a review immediately after this one. I'm now in college after all, and that unfortunately demands more of my immediate attention.

* * *

**Chapter 13: ****Prepping for a First-Class Dinner**

In the two days that followed, Sonic was busy learning the basics on how to act when in the presence of first class noblemen and women in preparation for the invitational dinner. Being that he had lived his life as a simple third classman and thus had what could be considered a likable but rough attitude, both Silver and Knuckles had a hard time to make the cobalt hedgehog actually try and act proper without going back to his usual behavior easily seen as deplorable to most first classmen.

Despite having lots of trouble with the behavioral department, they somehow managed to pull together a rather passable act provided Sonic kept his tongue in check and minded his words. They had spent the two days leading up to the dinner that Shadow had invited him to with the process, and they barely had enough time to try on a few suits that Silver was more than gracious enough to loan out. Then again, he had already said when they first made this arrangement that he rarely ever liked to wear suits yet brought them along in case the occasion to dawn them suddenly arose.

Tails had spent most of his time either in his room or up on deck while the three older teens were busy with their own things. While Sonic and Knuckles were concerned about him wandering on his own being that somebody might recognize him as a supposed fugitive, the young one brushed off their worries. He always came back to his room safe and sound at the end of the day, so they had allowed to let their fears dissipate.

"Remind me again why I'm forced to put such restricting clothes on instead of a bowtie to make myself look nice?" the teen hedgehog asked disdainfully as he looked himself over in a large changing mirror inside Silver's rather luxurious room that was clearly marked for only first-class inhabitants. He was dressed in a nicely pressed black tuxedo jacket over a wrinkle-free white dress shirt underneath and a pair of black pants. His trademark white-and-red-stripped sneakers were traded in with shiny black dress shoes, and adorned on his neck was a black bowtie with the straps cleverly hidden underneath the dress shirt collar. Both the room's inhabitant and Knuckles were seen standing a couple of feet behind the hedgehog with their arms crossed and looking pleased with themselves.

Sonic then continued on with a sour frown pasted onto his face as he began to mess around with the fancy cuffs that were added onto his trademark white gloves in an attempt to make them look to be of high standard, "Wouldn't a bowtie choking me to death have been enough? I honestly feel like I've been trapped in the tightest bubble ever to exist. You might as well have thrown me in a box that was only three feet wide all the way around."

"We've been through this a hundred times already, Sonic," Silver calmly responded, a feat that was rarely seen with first classmen speaking to third classmen. It was clear that he was as different from the rest as the echidna had claimed him to be. "Everybody in the first class dining hall is going to either be a member of first class or well-to-do second class folks invited up to eat. I don't know about the second classmen, but the first classmen would figure you to be in their eyes a lowly third classmen in a heartbeat and chase you out before you even get the chance to open your mouth. At least you should be able to somewhat blend in with the crowd with nothing but a few unspoken suspicions with a nice dinner suit on."

"I would if I could come with you to help make sure you keep your act together, but most of the first class people I've seen on board are bigwig business owners," Knuckles stated with a shrug of his shoulders. "I'd be surprised if none of them ever heard about my family's so-called fall from riches. They'd probably call me out on it and chase me out now that most consider me to be nothing more than third class trash. Not that I mind being said trash being that it allowed me to see what it truly meant to live and all that."

"Don't worry; I have a plan to make sure what we've taught him doesn't go to waste," the silver furred hedgehog reassured the echidna as he himself was also donned in a fancy dinner jacket. Everything was the same except that the outer clothes along with the bowtie and shoes were ebon white while the dress shirt was as dark as the blackest night. "Dr. Robotnik happens to be good friends with my family, so I can just graciously invite myself to dine with them just before Sonic comes into the picture. That should at least soften him up a bit along with allowing me to try and get you to the group in case they have something else to say about it. That's also why I'm choosing to wear a suit since he tends to give more respect to those wearing one. It's not foolproof, but it should allow some leeway if the time before we start manages to go wrong courtesy of Shadow's father and fiancée."

"Not to mention his ever creepy bodyguard that even the guy admitted he did not like much," Sonic added with a light chuckle as he stopped fiddling with the cuffs and seemingly resigned to his fate. "Why don't we hurry up and get this over with? I don't want to suffer through this any longer than I have to."

"It's almost seven, so I suppose we better go," the first classman agreed with a nod of his head as he started to head for the door before taking a gold pocket watch from a nearby dresser. "The good doctor is a bit of a stickler for tardiness. He already has a bad enough impression of you because of your social position. Let's try not to make that any worse.

"And Knuckles," Silver added as he motioned for Sonic to follow him towards the door. "You can go ahead and stay here if you want. I happen to know the personal attendant of this room, and he's just as lax as me about the whole social class situation. You can also invite Tails down here if you want, but it'll be harder to come back without me accompanying you."

"Well, you got to get out of here before you can get to the first class dining hall," Knuckles explained as he followed the two hedgehogs towards the wooden door just as it was opened. "If you can just give the crewman keeping guard there the word to allow me and a two-tailed fox to come through, then I'm sure we'd be okay. After all, you do have a respectful business under your belt last time I checked, and we all know how the crew respects or sucks up to people like that."

"It's worth a shot, I suppose. Just make sure you don't try to pull anything crazy like lose your temper it they decide to just reject you. Last thing we need is for you to go into this ship's version of a jail for the rest of the voyage."

"I'm not that stupid enough to do something like that when Tails is kind of depending on me right now to make sure nothing bad happens to him," the echidna scoffed as the three finally left the room. "He might say that he's okay, but he's hardly out of the woods from the frame job he got from the authorities back home. It's only when he's finally off this boat when I'll feel safe enough to leave him alone. Not to mention that I've kind of made it my mission to keep an eye on this brat so he doesn't get himself into irreversible trouble."

"Hey, I resent that!" the cobalt hedgehog exclaimed with a large pout before they made their way down the corridor. The other two simply laughed at this childish display while ignoring the odd and sometimes offended looks from others they passed by. They soon got into their small talk mode and politely made their way through the hall that led to where the first class diner was until they reached the end.

"Excuse me, but could you please allow this echidna and his fellow two-tailed friend to come through into my room?" Silver asked the crewman standing guard at the entrance to the first class hall. "He just needs to go and get something before returning, and I won't be able to accompany them back because of a dinner engagement."

"If you trust them enough, then who am I to not comply with your wishes?" the crewman dressed in black formal ship wear responded with a shrug of his shoulders as if he could care less about the whole thing. "I only warn you that it will be you who'll be in trouble if something bad ends up happening and they're under fire for it. I can only imagine what kind of trouble your third class friends may cause when unsupervised."

"I assure you that they can be trusted better than even the most honest man onboard," the silver hedgehog responded with a quick flash of a smile that oddly seemed to reflect a sense of annoyance. "Of course, I will take responsibility if any kind of trouble that is proven to have been caused by them ensues. I doubt, however, that it will come to that tonight."

"You best hope it doesn't lest you want to pay dearly for your naiveté," the man added with a huff of his breath before the three left him to his own musings.

"Well, I better find Tails and get back here before they either decide to change guards or we catch that ever so nice man in a worse mood," Knuckles stated sarcastically before moving towards a set of stairs that led upwards. "I'll see you two later! Make sure to tell me how the whole thing turns out."

"Alright, follow my lead and make sure to not pull anything that will embarrass both you and me," Silver warned before straightening out his dinner jacket and started to lead the way to the first class dining hall. "While I can live with it from the other first class guys, Knuckles will never let me forget about it and torture me until the day I die."

"Yeah, he kind of has that annoyingly good memory for embarrassing things," Sonic simply stated with a shrug of his shoulders as he followed closely behind. Like the first class hedgehog had said when they were still in his room, the first and second class people they had passed by either gave him silent suspicious looks or completely ignored him despite the fact that he was more or less likely walking somewhat stiff and awkwardly. Other than that, the trip to the first class dining hall was quite normal and unappealing apart from the small talk the two hedgehogs engaged themselves in.

"…And that's how Knuckles and I first met," Silver replied after spending about five minutes talking and finally arriving on the floor where signs started leading people to the first class dining hall. "Our parents decided to pull a partnership on a new business, and they just left us two to do whatever we wanted to do. We were only seven, but we really clicked and been friends from then on."

"But if Knuckles's parents made a business deal with yours, then how did he ended up falling into third class status?" Sonic asked with raised eyebrows as they turned a corner and saw the dining hall at the end. "That must've been one hell of a bad deal."

"Were that not the truth, I'd probably punch you in the nose for saying that," the other deadpanned. "An explosion in the main factory they were investing in decided to go up in flames, and that basically burned up all their profits. Put that on top of the fact that Knuckles's parents' second and last business they had was plummeting in stock sales, and you get what he is today. I'm sure you already know this, but both of his parents died from the stress it no doubt caused them just to try and stay afloat."

"You can say that again," the cobalt hedgehog responded sadly as they reached the back end of the line of people waiting patiently to go inside. "My Uncle Chuck had worked for his family as the manager of the ships that handled their goods. When he died, they graciously allowed me to live with them being that we were good family friends. It was barely even a year before Knuckles's family name went down the drain that lead to their deaths and left both of us to fend for ourselves. We ended up being one of the lucky few kids to survive on the streets."

"Hmm, I really wish that I could've been there to help you both out. Unfortunately, my parents decided to move after the factory explosion incident. With no way to contact Knuckles, I couldn't find any way to offer any help."

"Don't kick yourself in the butt over it now. It's already passed. And besides, Knuckles himself said earlier that it allowed him to figure out what it really meant to live. Even with my kind of spacy and borderline arrogant attitude, I could tell that he was kind of living in a small bubble with only me in there to keep him company. With all this happening, he now seems a lot more confident and willing to take the initiative. That and he was the one to earn us some money just to live being that his dad actually taught him how to play poker. Illegal or not, it was the only way for him to get money, and I hardly have any kind of talents that would even constitute the ability to make money. I pretty much just wandered around and hoped that he would come back with something and not get caught by the police for illegal activity. But if I didn't do that, then I wouldn't have found four-year-old Tails crying his eyes out and wondering why his parents had abandoned him."

"Tails was abandoned at four years old?" Silver asked with raised eyebrows in surprise at this revelation. "Why would any parent want to abandon someone as young as he was at the time?"

"We never really figured it out, but it didn't make any difference in our decision to take him in," Sonic explained as the line slowly moved forward. "While it was true that we were already barely getting enough money and food for just the two of us and that adding another person to take care of would most likely kill us, we weren't just going to let Tails fend for himself. He wasn't going to stand a chance no matter what, and it would have left a bad taste in our mouths if we just left him alone while only being concerned about ourselves. Luckily, the worst didn't come to be, and we managed with what we had. We soon learned that he is a great genius who can create lots of small things with what materials he could get his hands on. Needless to say, he grew up to be quite an independent little guy and decided to try to strike out on his own when he was eleven. We haven't seen him for two years until our fateful run-in aboard this ship."

"Wow, that is one inspiring story you three got there," the silver furred hedgehog responded with a genuine smile once the short remembrance was finished. "I can't believe you all managed to make the best out of the worst of situations and live through it. I've learned not to take things for granted thanks to my parents being very open with me about everything, but I doubt that I'd even be able to be as well off as you three were in the same conditions."

"There were times when things got pretty dicey to the point we'd wonder if we were going to make it, but we managed to pull through it by cutting corners like just cutting down to one meal instead of the usual two being that we agreed to skip breakfast," the cobalt hedgehog said with a shrug as if it were no big deal. Then again, it was already all in the past, so he could afford to just shrug it off now. "Not once was it ever easy to just find something to eat, but I have to admit that being with Tails and Knuckles made the whole thing a lot easier."

"All I can say now is that I'm glad you three managed to get on this ship. I'm not sure if you heard because of your potential lack of information, but there has been talk about a method on cleaning out the streets of homeless people in lieu of the economic slump. From what I heard, they were going to go as far as arresting any and all homeless people they saw and keep them imprisoned on false charges. And by making sure that they don't come out again, they can keep the streets safe and get rid of the third classmen at the same time. You're a member of third class, so I'm sure you know how bad the prejudice is against the classes."

"I-I never heard of anything like that! I noticed that a lot of the kids were no longer in the streets, but I figured that was because they were caught and sent to the orphanages where there are stories of mistreatment and all that. Wouldn't there have been some kind of stink about prison overcrowding and all that if what you're saying is true?"

"That's why they send said kids to the orphanages after capturing them and keep the adults in the prisons. I don't know what they do if either of the facilities become overcrowded, but I can assure that that it doesn't seem to be a happy ending for them. And with the way the economy is going in Robotropolis, I doubt things are going to get any better for the city's poorest inhabitants. All I can say is that you three were lucky to board this ship when you did. I hardly think that you would've been able to continue to live the way you've been."

For a couple of seconds, Sonic mused over the things that Silver had said as they continued to wait patiently in the quickly dwindling line for the dining hall. He had taken notice in his street travels that things were starting to become different. He knew that most of the poor people he remembered seeing and being friends with some were no longer there. He had never thought that the city officers were starting to really crack down on the homelessness in an attempt to clean up the streets.

"…I guess I really shouldn't be as surprised as I am now," the cobalt hedgehog responded with a low sigh. "I mean, I vaguely remember hearing some of the poor adults I've passed by a lot complaining about how the homeless shelters were closing down faster than they thought possible. That must've been their way to both save money and rally all us homeless guys in the streets were we could easily be caught. I really must have been a stroke of luck that Knuckles and I won those two tickets in our last Robotropolis poker game."

"Many people regardless of their economic position would gladly risk their lives for the chance you've been given to sail aboard the world's fastest and currently most famous ship," Silver responded with a small smile in an attempt to lighten up the mood that was starting to take the turn towards depressing before looking serious as it was finally their turn to enter the dining hall. He then said to the steward dressed in white and standing behind a wooden podium with pen in hand in a more refined tone, "My name is Silver Hedgehog. I believe I have a reservation for a table in the dining hall tonight."

"Just a moment, Mr. Silver," the steward politely responded in a deep voice as he looked down at a booklet that was most likely filled with names before moving his pen in a slashing fashion against the page. "You may go on ahead. Am I right in assuming that the gentleman beside you is an invited guest of yours?" the then asked with a small gaze of suspicion cleverly masked behind a seemingly welcoming smile.

"Of course he is," the silver furred hedgehog replied pleasantly in a tone that just possibly could be translated as a threat if one were to have listened more than carefully. "I trust that it will not be too much of a problem to allow him in along with me?"

"Of course not sir," the man politely responded before bowing his head lightly and motioning his hand towards the dining hall in allowance for them to enter. "Please enjoy the Titanic's well-acclaimed dining hall sirs."

"Thank you kindly," the first class hedgehog thanked with what seemed to be a forced smile before walking into the dining hall with Sonic following closely behind. Once they were out of earshot from the steward and in a sort of dead zone of the room where there were no chairs and hardly any people, he whispered, "The only people who could possibly miss that sense of animosity in his tone are others who actually side with his sentiments. I thank the heavens that my parents aren't like other first class people and raised me to judge with an even mind!"

"Sorry for asking you this, but are you bipolar or something?" the cobalt hedgehog asked with raised eyebrows after watching the previous short exchange at the entrance. "The way you talked with that guy earlier was completely different from how you were speaking with me! You took on such a sense of formality around you. You sure you weren't a third class guy that was adopted into a first class family?"

"As I just said, my behavior can hardly be considered anything like your usual first classman. Most would probably consider a new generation of wealth who will ruin the integrity of all first class and stain it with the filth of lower classes. I personally don't consider speaking to those of a class lower than me to be lowering my standards. In fact, I consider everyone I speak to as equals with the exception of extreme criminals.

"With all that said, I know how to shift from casual talk to formal conversation," he continued on with a small smug smile of sorts. "After all, a person of my stature must be prepared for the time when we speak to other respectable people."

"I think I know where Shadow learned how to switch between two styles of speeches so easily and quickly now. He's the same as you when it comes to that. Speaking of which, where is it that he's sitting at?"

"I see him with his father, fiancée, and personal bodyguard over there near the window," Silver discreetly pointed out through the crowd towards the other side of the room where the telltale sign of black quills streaked with red could easily be seen along with both the bald man and creepy hedgehog who were determined at the time to pin an attempted assassination on him. The bright orange horizon of the setting sun could easily be seen out the window behind the ebon hedgehog along with the emerald-like sea that the light imparted upon it. "Remember to be on your best behavior and keep your tongue in careful check. And if you can, try to talk somewhat as proper as I can if only to save yourself the embarrassment from Dr. Robotnik. He's well-known by most to look down at anybody lower in class than him and is not one of his most trusted workers. I'm still amazed that he allowed himself to dine with you in his presence considering how he was more than convinced you tried to kill his son."

"Thanks for the friendly warning," Sonic responded sarcastically before he quickly straightened out his black dinner jacket and followed Silver's lead to where their intended destination was at. He could only hope that he would not embarrass himself by tripping over his two feet or do something else clumsy with what he considered to be choppy movement thanks to the awkward suit he was forced to wear. "I'll make sure to try my best to make a good impression. If I fail, I'll just make sure to take you down with me."

Instead of answering, the other chose to ignore the comment and continue to lead the way while politely passing by the few people who happened to walk in the opposite direction and exchange quick greetings to those he knew. This was definitely going to be an interesting night no matter how anybody chose to look at it. That much was certain.

* * *

Well, I hope you all liked this new chapter. I really wanted to try and shift Silver's style of speech to show that he can easily connect with those of a lower class than him yet still easily converse with others of his social level should the need arise. It also serves to show that he really is different from the rest of the otherwise arrogant first class passengers in that he sees everybody as people and equals.

I also decided to put a bit more back story in Sonic and the gang's rather harsh past. I thought it would be fitting for you all to see where they came from and what they just barely managed to escape in search for a better life at Mobius. I hope that you all liked that little tidbit, especially since it took me a little while in order to get it right and on this site without any contradictions.

Please don't forget to leave a review before you move onto the next story that you want to write. They are always very helpful to me in that I read them and take into consideration any kind of suggestions that you may have. They are also pretty good morale boosters and keep me thinking of new things to write for both this and my other stories. Until the next update on this or my other stories everybody!


	14. Third Class Teen at a First Class Dinner

Hello everybody! Here's a new chapter for this story. To be perfectly honest with you, it's in the middle of the night here; three in the morning to be precise. I'm dead tired, so I'm not going to leave a very long author's note. I'll just say that I hope you enjoy this chapter. Please don't forget to leave a review before you move onto the next story that you want to read. They are always very helpful in that they allow me to see how well-received my chapters are to you all. Until the next update to this or any of my other stories everybody!

* * *

**Chapter 14: A Third Class Teen at a First Class Dinner**

"Hmm, I would have expected to have seen that third-class hedgehog by now," Rouge responded as she sat straight up in her chair and took a sip of water from a nearby glass. "I did say to him that we were to be having dinner at seven. I suppose punctuality isn't a part of his dictionary. Then again, I suppose I cannot really expect much from a person with a ticket for the stowage compartments of the ship."

"With all due respect Rouge, it's only five minutes before seven," Shadow politely countered as he casually stole a glance at the black watch with a gold rim that was situated around his left wrist. "As you just said, we told him to come at seven. And provided that the line to get in here has since grown in size from the time we arrived, I'm sure we can assume at least a couple of minutes' worth of delay. It's only natural being that most everybody on board here considers this a popular time for dinner."

"Shadow's right on that, Rouge," Dr. Robotnik agreed with his son before taking a sip of water himself. "Even the most punctual of men are allowed a few minutes of leeway. And don't forget that we've only been seated here for five minutes at the most ourselves. Give our guest just a little bit more time."

"I wouldn't be surprised if the stowage rat is already in line but having trouble just to enter this fine establishment," Mephiles responded with a light snort of his breath as he took his napkin and laid it neatly along his lap. "After all, I'm sure that any and all servers serving these first class businesses were informed to not let anybody either without reservations or are not first class members in. I've no doubt that the way he's dressed would indicate to everybody that he's a member of third class."

"I'm sure that he'd be more than capable of coming in," the ebon furred hedgehog replied despite the doubt he had in his mind that was raised courtesy of both his fiancée and bodyguard. He also made it a point to keep himself composed despite hearing who he considered his new friend being insulted. "You all just need to be a bit more patient and stop trying to find flaws in his character before he's even had the chance to do anything wrong. That and I believe it to be rude to talk about somebody's character when they aren't around to defend it."

"With all due respect, patience never allowed my business to be at the stage it was before our unfortunate economic downfall," the bat said with a bitter bite in her tone along with a small shrug of her shoulders. "Why do you think I pulled out of it and left my partner holding the stick? He was too patient for his own good in believing that our sales would do better while I was intent on saying that there was no other way to go but down. Patience is a virtue best left for those with nothing to gain and everything to lose."

Instead of choosing to answer, Shadow took his glass of water and drank from it before setting it down and settling on looking out at the window that showcased a setting sun along with the emerald-colored sea. As much as he wanted to disagree with the woman, he knew that it was most likely not his place being he has had nothing to do with her fashion business. It would only lead to an unneeded argument that she would most likely base off of her own experience rather than consider the other possibilities.

Not to mention that his ever-faithful bodyguard-for-hire might come up with another pessimistic thought. Just by the way he spoke of Sonic a few seconds ago indicated to the ebon hedgehog that he was most likely either a member of first or second class. He settled for the latter since he could not see a first class man actually going along with being in the front lines of protection and willingly risking his life. Being that he was employed by his father and was given accommodations fitting that of any other first class passenger; he might as well have been just as privileged and thus considered as one of them.

"Hello there, Dr. Robotnik!" A voice suddenly spoke up in the relatively quiet restaurant and broke Shadow out of his deep train of thought. "What a pleasure to have run into both you and your company here tonight."

Looking towards where he heard the voice, the ebon hedgehog noticed that it was Silver who was calmly approaching them dressed fancily in clothing that he was surprised to see him in. Following closely behind him was none other than Sonic, the person whom he had been expecting to see tonight and was also dressed in fancy clothing. This surprised him more than the sight of his first-class friend, but he noticed that both tuxedos looked the same in design and figured that Silver had loaned one to the other.

"Ah, isn't this a surprise?" Dr. Robotnik responded with a smile as he stood up and walked over to the newcomer with an arm outstretched for a shake. "To what do we owe the pleasure of your company, Silver?"

"Well, I had thought to come and try some of the food here after hearing some nice reviews from those who had a pleasant experience," the silver furred hedgehog responded smoothly as if he were speaking the truth while accepting the firm handshake. "Unfortunately, I failed to find any of my fellow business friends on board who were free to accompany me tonight, so I chose to come alone."

"If your intention was to come alone, then why is Sonic currently accompanying you?" Shadow asked as he raised an eyebrow at the previous explanation and looked beyond at the cobalt hedgehog who seemed out-of-place in the dining hall. "We had invited him for dinner and were expecting him to come on his own."

"Oh, I just happened to have run into him by accident yesterday. You see, I had managed to get myself lost aboard this ship while trying to get to the deck, and Sonic was more than kind enough to help lead me there. I had apparently taken a wrong turn and found myself heading down the second class corridors before he took notice that I was lost. I must admit that he was quite observant since I was trying my best to keep that fact to myself. We made small talk and I found him to have been quite an interesting fellow. And we just happened to meet again in line just a few minutes ago and decided to come in together."

"And I suppose it was during this round of small talk that he mentioned being invited by us to dinner," Mephiles responded more than questioned as he looked at the young first class hedgehog with stoic eyes that seemed to have been piercing through his soul for any signs of a lie. If not that, then he was simply trying to burn holes into the other's body. "If that is the case, then why not come up to us and invite yourself to our dinner before now? Why did you fail to approach us when you first figured out yesterday?"

"That was simply because I had been busy with some important paperwork that I have to finish before we arrive at Mobius. They are important for a potential business deal that my father has there, and he has sent me to act as his representative. My fiancée, Blaze, handed me those incomplete papers under the pretense that I would finish it for her. I am her husband-to-be, so the business she wants me to send these papers to deem it allowable for me to complete them in her stead. As such, I've been too busy to approach the good doctor and ask for a personal invitation to his dinner. Also, I was not sure if you wanted to accept other dinner mates being that you might have some important matters to discuss."

"Then I find no better time than now for us to officially invite you to our table for a wonderful evening!" Rouge responded happily as she gestured towards an empty chair next to her while Dr. Robotnik went back to his seat. "We would truly appreciate it if you were to join us tonight."

"I'd be more than happy to, Rouge," Silver accepted with a smile as he moved towards the mentioned seat. He then asked after he sat down, "Are you not going to take the seat next to Shadow, Sonic? You were invited to dine before I was, after all."

Ever since the conversation had started, Sonic had been standing behind the silver furred hedgehog unsure of what he was supposed to do. He simply allowed the other to do all the talking for him. And even after all of the half-truth explanations were over with, he still stood there like a dummy until he had heard his name being called.

"S-sorry about that!" he apologized as he tried to use his refined form of speech he had been practicing and feeling like he was failing at it before taking the seat next to Shadow. "I was just…simply admiring the dining room's décor."

"Now that we're all here as well as having one extra person, why don't we go ahead and start with the dinner?" Dr. Robotnik announced as cheerfully as he could before summoning a nearby server. "I'm quite eager to try out their seafood dishes. I've heard that they're simply the best and prepared by a four-star chef!"

And in the coming minutes that followed, everybody around the table enjoyed their dinner while engaging in small talk. Sonic had tried his best to be on his best behavior and keep his mouth in line while listening to what everybody was talking about. Actually, all he could do was listen since they were all talking mainly about things that sounded like they revolved around business, a topic that he was not privy to knowing anything about. Then again, he was content to simply just listening in on their conversation while calmly eating the seafood that he admitted was good but a bit too elegant and rich for his liking.

"And what is it that you do for a living, Mr. Sonic?" Rouge suddenly asked without warning and caught the cobalt hedgehog off-guard. "I would believe that you had a rather passable job to have afforded a ticket aboard this ship."

"Rouge!" Shadow quickly spoke up in defense to the female bat with a tone reflecting his disapproval. "I hardly think that's a proper question to be asking an invited dinner guest of ours right now if not at any time!"

"Well, I'm merely curious as to how he managed to acquire a ticket that's considered by all to be as rare as the elusive Chaos Emeralds," the bat responded with a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders as if she were doing nothing wrong. "If you don't mind me asking, just what kind of job did you leave behind?"

"Uh, I can't really say that I had any kind of job per se," Sonic slowly responded as if trying to carefully choose his words after putting the fork in his hand down in the bowl of seafood salad he was eating. Both Silver and Shadow noticed that he was struggling to try and come up with an explanation believable to both her and Shadow's father. After all, they both knew that he survived from scraps while Knuckles earned a living by illegally gambling, and those were two things that would definitely not go over well with everybody else at the table. "But if you really want to know, what I really did was just perform odd jobs here and there that most likely amount to nothing no matter how you look at it."

"I suppose that is to be expected what with how the current job situation in Robotropolis has been for the past couple of years," Dr. Robotnik replied with a small sigh before cutting up what looked to be a lobster tail and picking it up with his fork. Strangely enough, he was not as rude and judgmental as when he first met Sonic last night, but the presence of the food might have had a role in this. "If that's the case, however, then how did you manage to garner enough money in order to purchase a ticket aboard this wondrous cruise liner? I've heard that even a third-class ticket is expensive, although I suppose it isn't in comparison to first-class tickets."

"…Well, I was also living with a friend who just so happened to have a low-paying but steady job," the hedgehog answered after putting down the glass of water he had been taking a sip from in an attempt to stall for time. "While not by much, his pay was better than mines, and we pooled our money together in order to survive. Unfortunately, the job market had taken a turn for the worse, and he was ultimately laid off. Thankfully, he was laid off a few days after receiving a rather generous pay bonus for great workmanship. With that extra money combined with the money he and I saved, we had enough to purchase two tickets for this ship with a couple hundred dollars to spare. That's when we decided to board the Titanic and head to Mobius for a better job and ultimately a better life."

"Well, I guess you could consider that a lucky moment," Shadow said with a minute raise of his eyebrows at how quickly Sonic was able to come up with a believable story and not have any mention of the fact that he had won his ticket in an illegal poker game. He then added before putting a forkful of food in his mouth, "I can only hope then that your gamble with coming to Mobius for a better life pays off."

"Y-yes, I hope that's a gamble worth committing to," the third class teen responded with a smile despite mentally raising eyebrows at the ebon hedgehog's clever way of bringing up the truth without really giving anything away. "I mean, there are many others in my position back in Robotropolis who would most likely go so far as to kill in order to be allowed such an amazing opportunity. Of course, neither my friend nor I would ever think of stooping so low just to obtain some tickets!" he quickly added upon being on the receiving end of Rouge's eyes that were suddenly casted at him with suspicion.

"Hmm, I wonder," she simply said in as casual a tone as possible in order to appear nonchalant. Unfortunately for her, Shadow caught wind of her true meaning and flashed a quick apologetic glance towards Sonic. She then continued on with a sense of faux interest after sipping some water, "Anyway, I must admit that this was a rather wonderful dinner. I don't believe I ever had anything this tasty served to me back home. I simply must meet the chef before we arrive at Mobius and ask how he made the lobster."

"The lobster they served _is_ quite delicious," the ebon furred hedgehog confirmed with a nod while mentally taking note that she hardly ate anything tonight. He had a feeling it was Sonic's presence causing her lack of appetite, but he decided not to push the issue. He then said before taking another bite, "But I believe I'm more prone to their steak and sautéed shrimps. The steak seems nicely seasoned and the shrimps cooked just right. What do you feel was your favorite menu item tonight, Sonic?"

"Uh, I was kind of impressed with both the lobster bisque and seafood salad," Sonic responded as he honestly could not pick a favorite dish being that they were all quite good despite being a bit rich for his tastes. "Although I have to admit that the food served today is too good to simply choose a favorite."

"My, that's such a diplomatic answer for something so simple as a dish," Dr. Robotnik responded happily after finishing his lobster tail before pushing his plate away and moving for a plate of seafood salad. It was clear he was enjoying himself and more interested in the food rather than making small talk. "But I do have to agree with you that the food here is just too good to define a single favorite."

"I'm afraid that I must excuse myself for the time being," Mephiles spoke up after quietly eating his meal since the moment it started and rising up from his seat. "I don't mean to leave so abruptly, but there is something of importance that I must attend to before I forget. I thank you Dr. Robotnik for allowing me to eat alongside both you and your family."

"Oh, the pleasure was all mine, Mephiles," the portly man stated with an understanding smile as he picked up a fork and was ready to eat the salad. "I do hope that you'll be able to join up with us for dinner someday again."

"I'm sure that I'll be free for the next dinner evening that you might end up planning," the old hedgehog stated after pushing his chair in and nodding his head in farewell to the other occupants at the table. "I shall be taking my leave of you all now. I'm glad that you were able to join us for tonight's dinner, Mr. Silver. It was a pleasure to be in the presence of your beautiful self again, Ms. Rouge. I do hope that you can stay out of trouble this time while I'm not around to protect you, Shadow… And I hope that you have enjoyed your evening in our company, Mr. Sonic," he added with some slight hesitation and an unreadable look in his eyes before moving to leave the dining hall.

"N-nice to see you again, Mr. Mephiles," the cobalt hedgehog responded politely despite feeling the urge to call the man out on the obvious disdain against him he was holding back. He also felt the urge to give off a sarcastic remark of his own. Instead, he chose to hold himself back and keep his mouth busy with some water.

"Well, I believe thanks are in order for you inviting me to your dinner at the last minute, Dr. Robotnik," Silver said after being silent for a while as he picked up a nearby napkin and neatly wiped his mouth. "I truly hope I was not imposing or anything."

"Oh, we're always happy to be allowed the grace of your company, Silver!" Shadow happily replied with a genuinely warm smile. "There's no such thing as imposing when it comes to you. You know you're welcome anytime to spend time with us whenever you so choose to. Be it for business of pleasure, it matters not to us."

"Until the coming days after our marriage, of course," Rouge added with a smile as she placed her gaze lovingly at Shadow from the other side of the table. "I'm sure you wouldn't mind allowing us the privacy to engage in pleasure rather than business during our honeymoon session after our marriage."

"I may come from a family that fellow first class prefer to coin as 'new money', but even I know when privacy needs to be issued," the silver furred hedgehog said with a nod of his head that seemed to be out of habit more than anything else. "I have no intention in disrupting your honeymoon when you two do get married. And in case I get too busy and can't attend the fateful day, let me congratulate you on your union."

"Why, thank you!" the bat happily accepted the blessing with her smile growing even wider. "I truly hope that you'll be able to make it to our as-of-yet unconfirmed marriage day, Silver. Both you and…Blaze are more than welcome to be at our wedding party," she added with slight hesitation at the mention of Silver's best friend and her business rival. "Just make sure that she does not bring any of her business along with her. After all, a wedding day is a time to relax and enjoy the festivities."

"Thank you for your congratulations, Silver," the ebon furred hedgehog said with a smile yet spoke in a tone that sounded slightly stressed yet went unnoticed by all at the table except Sonic and Silver. "I, too, also hope that you will be able to make it to our wedding day. I dare say it would not be the same without you there."

"Congratulations, Shadow!" Sonic said since he did not know what else to say and did not want to seem like a silent idiot. And even though he remembered the ebon hedgehog talking to his fiancée at the time he was being accused by them for attempted murder in a not-so-loving fashion, it was at least to be in a polite gesture. "I wish both you and Ms. Rouge many years of happiness after the marriage day."

Instead of vocally thanking the teen for his congratulations, the white bat merely smiled at him and gave him a happy nod. While it was clear that she was silently thanking him, it was also noted that she was not happy at receiving such blessings from a person she considered to be beneath her. The hedgehogs had noticed this, but Silver merely placed his napkin neatly on the table while the other two simultaneously took a sip of water in order to hide the suspicious glances that they wanted to shoot at the woman.

"Well, I must say that this was a rather enjoyable evening," Dr. Robotnik suddenly said as he was finished with his salad in a rather quick fashion and dabbed the corners of his mouth with his napkin. "I must admit that it was quite a wonderful dinner experience with you. Perhaps we should try something like this some other time. Besides, I'm looking forward to trying out some of their other dishes that they say are inspired by the spicy cuisine best known from the region of Soleanna."

"Um, I would have to see if I can be free once more like today," the cobalt hedgehog said in a cautiously slow tone so as to not offend the man by mistake. That and he had a feeling he was only invited once more simply because it was out of kindness and more over because of his stomach. "Although I do greatly appreciate the offer and will consider it for the next chance we get to meet again."

"Then it's settled!" the portly man responded happily as he got up from his chair. "Until then, I believe I've had my fill. I shall be heading back to my room now and conduct some business. Do you care to join me, my son?"

"I believe I will stay behind and catch up a bit with Silver," Shadow simply said as he took a slice of decadent cheesecake with raspberry sauce that was just brought out by a waiter and passed around to those still at the table. He then added with a smile that seemed more eager than anything else, "And besides, I don't think I could pass up a dessert as wonderful as this that was no doubt carefully prepared by the chef."

"My, you always have a weak spot when it comes to cheesecakes," Rouge stated in a tone of adoration and a chuckle before politely declining the dessert that was about to be placed in front of her. She then said as she got up from her chair, "Well, I also have some paperwork that needs my attention before the night is over. A pleasure to meet you again, Silver." She then left with Dr. Robotnik without saying goodbye to Sonic.

"Ugh, I'm so sorry for the way she's been acting tonight, Sonic," the ebon hedgehog apologized once both his father and fiancée had left the dining hall and immediately dropped his formal attitude. "I know that she doesn't think too much of you, but I was kind of hoping that she would at least try to hold back a bit."

"Oh, it's alright, Shadow," Sonic blew off with a shrug of his shoulders before reaching for a fork and cutting into the cake. "I'm way beyond used to that from when I was living on the streets. "If it ain't being ignored by people, it's being insulted by them. Either way, it's something I've learned to take with a grain of salt, but I really had a hard time doing that what with having to sound all proper."

"I'm amazed that you were able to keep up with the act," Silver stated with an amused smile that earned him a glare from the cobalt hedgehog who had since took a bite of the dessert and immediately lost his harsh glare. "I was seriously just waiting for the moment when you blew the whole thing and needed me to jump in."

"I'm more surprised over the fact that he's actually wearing a suit. I was already surprised enough that you came in wearing one, but just imagine how I was feeling when I saw Sonic with you looking like that."

"You don't know how much I'm suffering in this suit," the cobalt hedgehog said after swallowing the delicious dessert and immediately moving to take another bite. "But this piece of dessert is definitely worth it! It's the best thing I've had all night. I'm so going to rub this in Knuckles' face when I get back."

"Oh no, I got a feeling I'm going to be contending with two guys both going crazy over cheesecake," the silver furred hedgehog said with a light groan before taking a bite himself. He then said after swallowing it, "Just promise me Shadow that you won't OD on the stuff this time. I don't want a repeat of last time where you had to go to the university infirmary because you got a bad stomach ache from eating two large slices after a filling meal."

Instead of answering to the recollection, Shadow seemed content enough to just shoot a harsh glare while looking somewhat embarrassed. And since he had nothing else to say or do, he just took a bite of the cheesecake that he was admittedly a big sucker for. At least that was a good way to shift his mood from sour to happy despite his outer appearance looking stoic and saying otherwise. Soon after, the three teens were talking happily with each other while enjoying their dessert.


End file.
